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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea6bdb5 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #68331 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68331) diff --git a/old/68331-0.txt b/old/68331-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index aadcd30..0000000 --- a/old/68331-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2333 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Planet of sand, by Murray Leinster - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Planet of sand - -Author: Murray Leinster - -Release Date: June 16, 2022 [eBook #68331] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLANET OF SAND *** - - - - - - PLANET OF SAND - - By Murray Leinster - - _Tossed into the trackless Cosmos by his - mortal enemy, shipwrecked on an unfriendly - star, he determined to defy the dangers of - numberless nights, and, hunted turned - hunter, keep a tryst with Hate...._ - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1948. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - - - -[Illustration: He debated straggling farther under the shelter of the -monstrous roof....] - - -There was bright, pitiless light in the prison corridor of the -_Stallifer_. There was the hum of the air-renewal system. Once in every -so often there was a cushioned thud as some item of the space ship's -machinery operated some relay somewhere. But it was very tedious to be -in a confinement cell. Stan Buckley--Lieutenant, J.G., Space Guard, -under charges and under restraint--found it rather more than tedious. - -He should have been upheld, perhaps, by the fact that he was innocent -of the charges made against him by Rob Torren, formerly his immediate -superior officer. But the feeling of innocence did not help. He sat in -his cell, holding himself still with a grim resolution. But a deep, a -savage, a corrosive anger grew and grew and grew within him. It had -been growing in just this manner for weeks. - -The _Stallifer_ bored on through space. From her ports the cosmos -was not that hostile, immobile curtain of unwinking stars the early -interstellar travelers knew. At twelve hundred light-speeds, with the -Bowdoin-Hall field collapsing forty times per second for velocity -control, the stars moved visibly. Forty glimpses of the galaxy about -the ship in every second made it seem that the universe was always in -view. - -And the stars moved. The nearer ones moved swiftly and the farther ones -more slowly, but all moved. And habit made motion give the feeling of -perspective, so that the stars appeared to be distributed in three -dimensions and from the ship seemed very small, like fireflies. All the -cosmos seemed small and almost cosy. The Rim itself appeared no more -than a few miles away. But the _Stallifer_ headed for Earth from Rhesi -II, and she had been days upon her journey, and she had come a distance -which it would stagger the imagination to compute. - -In his cell, though, Stan Buckley could see only four walls. There was -no variation of light; no sign of morning or night or afternoon. At -intervals, a guard brought him food. That was all--except that his deep -and fierce and terrible anger grew until it seemed that he would go mad -with it. - -He had no idea of the hour or the day when, quite suddenly, the -pitiless light in the corridor dimmed. Then the door he had not seen -since his entrance into the prison corridor clanked open. Footsteps -came toward his cell. It was not the guard who fed him. He knew that -much. It was a variation of routine which should not have varied until -his arrival on Earth. - -He sat still, his hands clenched. A figure loomed outside the cell -door. He looked up coldly. Then fury so great as almost to be frenzy -filled him. Rob Torren looked in at him. - -There was silence. Stan Buckley's muscles tensed until it seemed that -the bones of his body creaked. Then Rob Torren said caustically: - -"It's lucky there are bars, or there'd be no chance to talk! Either -you'd kill me and be beamed for murder, or I'd kill you and Esther -would think me a murderer. I've come to get you out of this if you'll -accept my terms." - -Stan Buckley made an inarticulate, growling noise. - -"Oh, surely!" said Rob Torren. "I denounce you, and I'm the witness -against you. At your trial, I'll be believed and you won't. You'll -be broken and disgraced. Even Esther wouldn't marry you under such -circumstances. Or maybe," he added sardonically, "maybe you wouldn't -let her!" - -Stan Buckley licked his lips. He longed so terribly to get his hands -about his enemy's throat that he could hardly hear his words. - -"The trouble is," said Rob Torren, "that she probably wouldn't marry me -either, if you were disgraced by my means. So I offer a bargain. I'll -help you to escape--I've got it all arranged--on your word of honor to -fight me. A duel. To the death." His eyes were hard. His tone was hard. -His manner was almost contemptuous. Stan Buckley said hoarsely: - -"I'll fight you anywhere, under any conditions!" - -"The conditions," Rob Torren told him icily, "are that I will help you -to escape. You will then write a letter to Esther, saying that I did -so and outlining the conditions of the duel as we agree upon them. I -will, in turn, write a letter to the Space Guard brass, withdrawing my -charges against you. We will fight. The survivor will destroy his own -letter and make use of the other. Do you agree to that?" - -"I'll agree to anything," said Stan Buckley fiercely, "that will get my -hands about your throat!" - -Rob Torren shrugged. - -"I've turned off the guard photocells," he said calmly. "I've a key for -your cell. I'm going to let you out. I can't afford to kill you except -under the conditions I named, or I'll have no chance to win Esther. If -you kill me under any other conditions, you'll simply be beamed as a -murderer." He paused, and then added, "And I have to come and fight you -because a letter from you admitting that I've behaved honorably is the -only possible thing that would satisfy Esther. You give your word to -wait until you've escaped and I come for you before you try to kill me?" - -Stan Buckley hesitated a long, long time. Then he said in a thick -voice, "I give my word." - -Without hesitation, Rob Torren put a key in the cell door and turned -it. He stood aside. Stan Buckley walked out, his hands clenched. Torren -closed the door and re-locked it. He turned his back and walked down -the corridor. He opened the door at its end. Again he stood aside. Stan -Buckley went through. Torren closed the door, took a bit of cloth from -his pocket, wiped off the key, hung it up again on a tiny hook, with -the same bit of cloth threw a switch, and put the cloth back in his -pocket. - -"The photocells are back on," he said in a dry voice. "They say you're -still in your cell. When the guard contradicts them, you'll seem to -have vanished into thin air." - -"I'm doing this," said Stan hoarsely, "to get a chance to kill you. Of -course I've no real chance to escape!" - -That was obvious. The _Stallifer_ was deep in the void of interstellar -space. She traveled at twelve hundred times the speed of light. Escape -from the ship was impossible. And concealment past discovery when the -ship docked was preposterous. - -"That remains to be seen," said Torren coldly. "Come this way." - - * * * * * - -Torren went down a hallway. He slipped into a narrow doorway, -unnoticeable unless one was looking for it. Stan followed. He found -himself in that narrow, compartmented space between the ship's inner -and outer skins. A door; another compartment; another door. Then a tiny -air-lock--used for the egress of a single man to inspect or repair such -exterior apparatus as the scanners for the ship's vision screens. There -was a heap of assorted apparatus beside the air-lock door. - -"I prepared for this," said Torren curtly. "There's a space suit. -Put it on. Here's a meteor miner's space skid. There are supplies. I -brought this stuff as luggage, in water-tight cases. I'll fill the -cases with my bath water and get off the ship with the same weight of -luggage I had when I came on. That's my cover-up." - -"And I?" asked Stan harshly. - -"You'll take this chrono. It's synchronized with the ship's navigating -clock. At two-two even you push off from the outside of the ship. The -drive field fluctuates. When it collapses, you'll be outside it. When -it expands--" - -Stan Buckley raised his eyebrows. This was clever! The Bowdoin-Hall -field, which permits of faster-than-light travel, is like a pulsating -bubble, expanding and contracting at rates ranging from hundreds of -thousands of times per second to the forty-per-second of deep-space -speed. When the field is expanding, and bars of an artificial allotrope -of carbon are acted upon by electrostatic forces in a certain -scientific fashion, a ship and all its contents accelerate at a rate -so great that it simply has no meaning. As the field contracts, a ship -decelerates again. That is the theory, at any rate. There is no proof -in sensation or instrument readings that such is the case. But velocity -is inversely proportional to the speed of the field's pulsations, and -only in deep space does a ship dare slow the pulsations too greatly, -for fear of complications. - -However, a man in a space suit could detach himself from a space ship -traveling by the Bowdoin-Hall field. He could float free at the instant -of the field's collapse, and be left behind when it expanded again. But -he would be left alone in illimitable emptiness. - -"You'll straddle the space skid," said Torren shortly. "It's full -powered--good for some millions of miles. At two-two exactly the -_Stallifer_ will be as close to Khor Alpha as it will go. Khor Alpha's -a dwarf white star that's used as a course marker. It has one planet -that the directories say has a breathable atmosphere, and list as a -possible landing refuge, but which they also say is unexamined. You'll -make for that planet and land. You'll wait for me. I'll come!" - -Stan Buckley said in soft ferocity, "I hope so!" - -Torren's rage flared. - -"Do you think I'm not as anxious to kill you as you are to kill me?" - -For an instant the two tensed, as if for a struggle to the death there -between the two skins of the space ship. Then Torren turned away. - -"Get in your suit," he said curtly. "I'll get a private flyer and come -after you as soon as the hearing about your disappearance is over. Push -off at two-two even. Make it exact!" - -He went angrily away, and Stan Buckley stared after him, hating him, -and then grimly turned to the apparatus that lay in an untidy heap -beside the air-lock door. - -Five minutes later he opened the outer door of the lock. He was clad -in space armor and carried with him a small pack of supplies--the -standard abandon-ship kit--and the little space-drive unit. The unit -was one of those space skids used by meteor miners--merely a shaft -which contained the drive and power unit, a seat, and a cross-shaft by -which it was steered. It was absurdly like a hobby-horse for a man in -a space suit, and it was totally unsuitable for interplanetary work -because it consumed too much power when fighting gravity. For Stan, -though, starting in mid-space and with only one landing to make, it -should be adequate. - -He locked the chrono where he could see it on the steering bar. He -strapped the supply kit in place. He closed the air-lock door very -softly. He waited, clinging to the outer skin of the ship with magnetic -shoes. - -The cosmos seemed very small and quite improbable. The specks of light -which were suns seemed to crawl here and there. Because of their motion -it was impossible to think of them as gigantic balls of unquenchable -fire. They moved! To all appearances, the _Stallifer_ flowed onward in -a cosmos perhaps a dozen miles in diameter, in which many varicolored -fireflies moved with a vast deliberation. - -The hand of the chrono moved, and moved, and moved. At two-two -exactly, Stan pressed the drive stud. At one instant he and his -improbable space steed rested firmly against a thousand-foot hill of -glistening chrom-steel. The waverings of the Bowdoin-Hall field were -imperceptible. The cosmos was small and limited and the _Stallifer_ was -huge. Then the skid's drive came on. It shot away from the hull--and -the ship vanished as utterly as a blown-out candle flame. And the -universe was so vast as to produce a cringing sensation in the man who -straddled an absurd small device in such emptiness, with one cold white -sun--barely near enough to show a disk--and innumerable remote and -indifferent stars on every hand. - -On the instant when the ship's field contracted and left him outside, -Stan had lost the incredible velocity the field imparts. In the -infinitesimal fraction of a second required for the field to finish -its contraction after leaving him, the ship had traveled literally -thousands of miles. In the slightly greater fraction of a second -required for it to expand again, it had moved on some millions of -miles. By the time Stan's mind had actually grasped the fact that he -was alone in space, the ship from which he had separated himself was -probably fifty or sixty millions of miles away. - -He was absolutely secure against recapture, of course. If his escape -went unnoticed for even half a minute, it would take all the ships of -all the Space Guard a thousand years to search the volume of space in -which one small space-suited figure might be found. And it was unlikely -that his escape would be noticed for hours. - -He was very terribly alone. A dwarf white sun glowed palely, many, many -millions of miles away. Stars gazed at him incuriously, separated by -light-centuries of space. - -He started the minute gyroscopes that enabled him to steer the skid. -He started in toward the sun. He had a planet to find and land on. Of -course, Rob Torren could simply have contrived his escape to emptiness -so that he might die and shrivel in the void, and never, never, never -through all eternity be found again. But somehow, Stan had a vast faith -in the hatred which existed between the two of them. - - * * * * * - -It was two days later when he approached the solitary planet of Khor -Alpha. The air in his space suit had acquired that deadly staleness -which is proof that good air is more than merely a mixture of oxygen -and nitrogen. He felt the sluggish discomfort which comes of bottled, -repurified breathing-mixture. And as the disk of the planet grew large, -he saw little or nothing to make him feel more cheerful. - -The planet rotated as he drew near, and it seemed to be absolutely -featureless. The terminator--the shadow line as sunlight encroached -on the planet's night side--was a perfect line. There were, then, no -mountains. There were no clouds. There seemed to be no vegetation. -There was, though, a tiny polar icecap--so small that at first he -did not discover it. It was not even a dazzling white, but a mere -whitishness where a polar cap should be, as if it were hoarfrost -instead of ice. - -He went slanting down to match the planet's ground speed in his -approach. Astride the tiny space skid, he looked rather like an -improbable witch astride an incredible broomstick. And he was very, -very tired. - -Coming up in a straight line, half the planet's disk was night. Half -the day side was hidden by the planet's bulge. He actually saw no more -than a quarter of the surface at this near approach, and that without -magnification. - -Any large features would have been spotted from far away, but he had -given up hope of any variation from monotony when--just as he was about -to enter the atmosphere--one dark patch in the planet's uniformly -dazzling white surface appeared at the very edge of day. It was at the -very border of the dawn belt. He could be sure only of its existence, -and that it had sharp, specifically straight edges. - -He saw rectangular extensions from the main mass of it. Then he hit -atmosphere, and the thin stuff thrust at him violently because of his -velocity, and he blinked and automatically turned his head aside, so -that he did not see the dark patch again before his descent put it -below the horizon. - -Even so near, no features, no natural formations appeared. There was -only a vast brightness below him. He could make no guess as to his -height nor--after he had slowed until the wind against his body was not -detectable through the space suit--of his speed with relation to the -ground. It was extraordinary. It occurred to him to drop something to -get some idea, even if a vague one, of his altitude above the ground. - -He did--an oil-soaked rag from the tool kit. It went fluttering down -and down, and abruptly vanished, relatively a short distance below him. -It had not landed. It had been blotted out. - -Tired as he was, it took him minutes to think of turning on the -suit-microphone which would enable him to hear sounds in this -extraordinary world. But when he flicked the switch he heard a dull, -droning, moaning noise which was unmistakable. Wind. Below him there -was a sandstorm. He was riding just above its upper surface. He could -not see the actual ground because there was an opaque wall of sand -between. There might be five hundred feet between him and solidity, or -five thousand, or there might be no actual solid, immovable ground at -all. In any case, he could not possibly land. - -He rose again and headed for the dark area he had noted. But a space -skid is not intended for use in atmosphere. Its power is great, to be -sure, when its power unit is filled. But Stan had come a very long way -indeed since his departure from the _Stallifer_. And his drive had -blown a fuse, once, which cost him some power. - -Unquestionably, the blown fuse had been caused by the impinging of -a Bowdoin-Hall field upon the skid. Some other space ship than the -_Stallifer_, using Khor Alpha as a course guide, had flashed past -the one-planet system at many hundred times the speed of light. The -pulsations of its drive field had struck the skid and drained its drive -of power, and unquestionably had registered the surge. But it was not -likely that it would be linked with Stan's disappearance. The other -ship might be headed for a star system light-centuries from Earth, and -a minute--relatively a minute--joggle of its meters would not be a -cause for comment. The real seriousness of the affair was that the skid -had drained power before its fuse blew. - -That property of a Bowdoin-Hall field, incidentally--its trick of -draining power from any drive unit in its range--is the reason that -hampers its use save in deep space. Liners have to be elaborately -equipped with fuses lest in shorting each other's drives they wreck -their own. In interplanetary work, fuses are not even practical because -they might be blown a hundred times in a single voyage. Within solar -systems high-frequency pulsations are used, so that no short can last -more than the hundred-thousandth of a second, in which time not even -allotropic graphite can be ruined. - -Stan, then, was desperately short of power and had to use it in a -gravitational field which was prodigally wasteful of it. He had to -rise high above the sandstorm before he saw the black area again -at the planet's very rim. He headed for it in the straightest of -straight lines. As he drove, the power-gauge needle flickered steadily -over toward zero. A meteor miner does not often use as much as one -earth-gravity acceleration, and Stan had to use that much merely to -stay aloft. The black area, too, was all of a hundred-odd miles away, -and after some millions of miles of space travel, the skid was hard put -to make it. - -He dived for the black thing as it drew near, and on his approach it -appeared simply impossible. It was a maze, a grid, of rectangular -girders upholding a seemingly infinite number of monstrous dead-black -slabs. There was a single layer of those slabs, supported by -innumerable spidery slender columns. Here, in the dawn belt, there was -no wind and Stan could see clearly. Sloping down, he saw that ten-foot -columns of some dark metal rose straight and uncompromising from a -floor of sand to a height of three hundred feet or more. At their top -were the grid and the slabs, forming a roof some thirty stories above -the ground. There were no under-floors, no cross-ways, no structural -features of any sort between the sand from which the columns rose and -that queer and discontinuous roof. - -Stan landed on the ground at the structure's edge. He could see streaks -and bars of sky between the slabs. He looked down utterly empty aisles -between the columns and saw nothing but the columns and the roof until -the shafts merged in the distance. There was utter stillness here. The -sand was untroubled and undisturbed. If the structure was a shelter, it -sheltered nothing. Yet it stretched for at least a hundred miles in at -least one direction, as he had seen from aloft. As nearly as he could -tell, there was no reason for its existence and no purpose it could -serve. Yet it was not the abandoned skeleton of something no longer -used. It was plainly in perfect repair. - -The streaks of sky to be seen between its sections were invariably -exact in size and alignment. They were absolutely uniform. There was no -dilapidation and no defect anywhere. The whole structure was certainly -artificial and certainly purposeful, and it implied enormous resources -of civilization. But there was no sign of its makers, and Stan could -not even guess at the reason for its construction. - -But he was too worn out to guess. On board the _Stallifer_, he'd been -so sick with rage that he could not rest. On the space skid, riding in -an enormous loneliness about a dwarf sun whose single planet had never -been examined by men, he had to be alert. He had to find the system's -one planet, and then he had to make a landing with practically no -instruments. When he landed at the base of the huge grid, he examined -his surroundings wearily, but with the cautious suspicion needful on -an unknown world. Then he made the sort of camp the situation seemed -to call for. He clamped the space skid and his supplies to his space -suit belt, lay down hard by one of the columns, and incontinently fell -asleep. - - * * * * * - -He was wakened by a horrific roaring in his earphones. He lay still -for one instant. When he tried to stir, it was only with enormous -difficulty that he could move his arms and legs. He felt as if he were -gripped by quicksand. Then, suddenly, he was wide awake. He fought -himself free of clinging incumbrances. He had been half buried in sand. -He was in the center of a roaring, swirling sand-devil which broke upon -the nearby column and built up mounds of sand and snatched them away -again, and flung great masses of it crazily in every direction. - -As the enigmatic structure had moved out of the dawn belt into the -morning, howling winds had risen. All the fury of a tornado, all the -stifling deadliness of a sandstorm, beat upon the base of the grid. And -from what Stan had seen when he first tried to land, this was evidently -the normal daily weather of this world. And if this was a sample of -merely morning winds, by midday existence would be impossible. - -Stan looked at the chrono. He had slept less than three hours. He made -a loop of line from the abandon-ship kit and got it about the nearest -pillar. He drew himself to that tall column. He tried to find a lee -side, but there was none. The wind direction changed continually. He -debated struggling farther under the shelter of the monstrous roof. He -stared up, estimatingly-- - -He saw slabs tilt. In a giant section whose limits he could not -determine, he saw the rectangular sections of the roof revolve in -strict unison. From a position parallel to the ground, they turned -until the light of the sky shone down unhindered. Vast masses of sand -descended--deposited on the slabs by the wind, and now dumped down -about the columns' bases. And then wind struck anew with a concentrated -virulence, and the space between the columns became filled with a -whirling giant eddy that blotted out everything. - -It was a monster whirlwind that spun crazily in its place for minutes, -and then roared out to the open again. In its violence it picked Stan -up bodily, with the skid and abandon-ship kit still clamped to his -space suit. But for the rope about the column he would have been ripped -away and tossed insanely into the smother of sand that reached to the -horizon. - -After a long time, he managed to take up some of the slack of the rope; -to bind himself and his possessions more closely to the column which -rose into the smother overhead. Later still, he was able to take up -more. In an hour, he was bound tightly to the pillar and was no longer -flung to and fro by the wind. Then he dozed off again. - -It was uneasy slumber. It gave him little rest. Once a swirling -sand-devil gouged away the sand beneath him so that he and his gear -hung an unguessable distance above solidity, perhaps no more than a -yard or so, but perhaps much more. Later he woke to find the sand -piling up swiftly about him, so that he had to loosen his rope and -climb wearily as tons of fine, abrasive stuff--it would have been -strangling had he needed to breathe it direct--were flung upon him. But -he did sleep from time to time. - -Then night fell. The winds died down from hurricane intensity to no -more than gale force. Then to mere frantic gusts. And then--the sun -had set on the farther side of the huge structure to which he had tied -himself--then there was a period when a fine whitish mist seemed to -obscure all the stars, and it gradually faded, and he realized that it -was particles of so fine a dust that it hung in the air long after the -heavier stuff had settled. - -He released himself from the rope about the pillar. He stood, a tiny -figure, beside the gargantuan columns of black metal which rose toward -the stars. The stars themselves shone down brightly, brittlely, through -utterly clear air. There were no traces of cloud formation following -the storm of the day. - -It was obvious that this was actually the normal weather of this -planet. By day, horrific winds and hurricanes. By night, a vast -stillness. And the small size and indistinctness of the icecap he -had seen was assurance that there was nowhere on the planet any -sizeable body of water to moderate the weather. And with such storms, -inhabitants were unthinkable. Life of any sort was out of the question. -But if there was anything certain in the cosmos, it was that the -structure at whose feet he stood was artificial! - -He flicked on his suit-radio. Static only. Sand particles in dry air, -clashing against each other, would develop charges to produce just the -monstrous hissing sounds his earphones gave off. He flicked off the -radio and opened his face-plate. Cold dry air filled his lungs. - -There were no inhabitants. There could not be any. But there was this -colossal artifact of unguessable purpose. There was no life on this -planet, but early during today's storm--and he suspected at other times -when he could neither see nor hear--huge areas of the roof-plates had -turned together to dump down their accumulated loads of sand. As he -breathed in the first breaths of cold air, he heard a shrill outcry -and a roaring somewhere within the forest of pillars. At a guess, it -was another dumping of sand from the roof. It stopped. Another roaring, -somewhere else. Yet another. Section by section, area by area, the sand -that had piled on the roof at the top of the iron columns was dumped -down between the columns' bases. - -Stan flicked on the tiny instrument lights and looked at the motor of -the space skid. The needle was against the pin at zero. He considered, -and shrugged. Rob Torren would come presently to fight him to the -death. But it would take the _Stallifer_ ten days or longer to reach -Earth, then three or four days for the microscopic examination of every -part of the vast ship in a grim search for him. - -Then there'd be an inquiry. It might last a week or two weeks or -longer. The findings would be given after deliberation which might -produce still another delay of a week or even a month. - -Rob Torren would not be free to leave Earth before then. And then it -would take him days to get hold of a space yacht and--because a yacht -would be slower than the _Stallifer_--two weeks or so to get back here. -Three months in all, perhaps. Stan's food wouldn't last that long. His -water supply wouldn't last nearly as long as that. - -If he could get up to the icecap there would be water, and on the -edge of the ice he could plant some of the painstakingly developed -artificial plants whose seeds were part of every abandon-ship kit. -They could live and produce food under almost any set of planetary -conditions. But he couldn't reach the polar cap without power the skid -didn't have. - -He straddled the little device. He pointed it upward. He rose -sluggishly. The absurd little vehicle wabbled crazily. Up, and up, and -up toward the uncaring stars. The high thin columns of steel seemed to -keep pace with him. The roof of this preposterous shed loomed slowly -nearer, but the power of the skid was almost gone. He was ten feet -below the crest when diminishing power no longer gave thrust enough to -rise. He would hover here for seconds, and then drift back down again -to the sand--for good. - -He flung his kit of food upward. It sailed over the sharp edge of the -roof and landed there. The skid was thrust down by the force of the -throw, but it had less weight to lift. It bounced upward, soared above -the roof, and just as its thrust dwindled again, Stan managed to land. - -He found--nothing. - -To be exact, he found the columns joined by massive girders of steel -fastening them in a colossal open grid. Upon those girders which ran -in a line due north and south--reckoning the place of sunset to be -west--huge flat plates of metal were slung, having bearings which -permitted them to be rotated at the will of whatever unthinkable -constructor had devised them. - -There were small bulges which might contain motors for the turning. -There was absolutely nothing but the framework and the plates and the -sand some three hundred feet below. There was no indication of the -purpose of the plates or the girders or the whole construction. There -was no sign of any person or creature using or operating the slabs. It -appeared that the grid was simply a monotonous, featureless, insanely -tedious construction which it would have taxed the resources of Earth -to build. It stretched far, far beyond the horizon--and did nothing and -had no purpose save to gather sand on its upper surface and from time -to time dump that sand down to the ground. It did not make sense. - -Stan had a more immediate problem than the purpose of the grid, though. -He was three hundred feet above ground. He was short of food and -hopelessly short of water. When day came again, this place would be -the center of a hurricane of blown sand. On the ground, lashed to a -metal column, he had been badly buffeted about even in his space suit. -Up here the wind would be much stronger. It was not likely that any -possible lashing would hold him against such a storm. He could probably -get back to the ground, of course, but there seemed no particular point -to it. - -As he debated, there came a thin, shrill whistling overhead. It came -from the far south, and passed overhead, descending, and--going down -in pitch--it died away to the northward. The lowering of its pitch -indicated that it was slowing. The sound was remarkably like that of a -small space craft entering atmosphere incompletely under control--which -was unthinkable, of course, on the solitary unnamed planet of Khor -Alpha. And Stan felt very, very lonely on a huge plate of iron thirty -stories above the ground, on an alien planet under unfriendly stars, -and with this cryptic engineering monstrosity breaking away to sheer -desert on one side and extending uncounted miles in all others. He -flicked on his suit-radio, without hope. - -There came the loud, hissing static. Then under and through it came the -humming carrier-wave of a yacht transmitter sending on emergency power. - -"Help call! Help call! Space yacht _Erebus_ grounded on planet of Khor -Alpha, main drive burned out, landed in darkness, outside conditions -unknown. If anyone hears, p-please answer! M-my landing drive smashed -when I hit ground, too! Help call! Help call! Space yacht _Erebus_ -grounded on planet of Khor Alpha, main drive burned out, landed in -darkness--" - -Stan Buckley had no power. He could not move from this spot. The -_Erebus_ had grounded somewhere in the desert which covered all the -planet but this one structure. When dawn came, the sandstorm would -begin again. And with its main drive burned out, its landing drive -smashed--when the morrow's storms began it would be strange indeed if -the whirlwinds did not scoop away sand from about the one solid object -they'd encounter, so that the little craft would topple down and down -and ultimately be covered over, buried under maybe hundreds of feet of -smothering stuff. - -He knew the _Erebus_. Of course. It belonged to Esther Hume. The voice -from it was Esther's--the girl he was to have married, if Rob Torren -hadn't made charges disgracing him utterly. And tomorrow she would be -buried alive in the helpless little yacht, while he was unable to lift -a finger to her aid. - - * * * * * - -He was talking to her desperately when there was a vast, labored tumult -to the west. It was the product of ten thousand creakings. He turned, -and in the starlight he saw great flat plates--they were fifty feet by -a hundred and more--turning slowly. An area a mile square changed its -appearance. Each of the flat plates in a hundred rows of fifty plates -turned sidewise, to dump its load of settled sand. A square mile of -plates turned edges to the sky--and turned back again. Creakings and -groanings filled the air, together with the soft roaring noise of -the falling sand. A pause. Another great section of a mile each way -performed the same senseless motion. Pure desperation made Stan say -sharply: - -"Esther! Cut off for half an hour! I'll call back! I see the slimmest -possible chance, and I've got to take it! Half an hour, understand?" - -He heard her unsteady assent. He scrambled fiercely to the nearest of -the huge plates. It was, of course, insane to think of such a thing. -The plates had no purpose save to gather loads of sand and then to turn -and dump them. But there were swellings at one end of each--where the -girders to which they clung united to form this preposterous elevated -grid. Those swellings might be motors. He dragged a small cutting-torch -from the tool kit. He snapped its end. A tiny, savage, blue-white flame -appeared in midair half an inch from the torch's metal tip. - -He turned that flame upon the rounded swelling at the end of a monster -slab. Something made the slabs turn. By reason, it should be a motor. -The swellings might be housings for motors. He made a cut across such a -swelling. At the first touch of the flame something smoked luridly and -frizzled before the metal grew white-hot and flowed aside before the -flame. There had been a coating on the iron. - -Even as he cut, Stan realized that the columns and the plates were -merely iron. But the sand blast of the daily storms should erode the -thickest of iron away in a matter of weeks, at most. So the grid was -coated with a tough, elastic stuff--a plastic of some sort--which was -not abraded by the wind. It did not scratch because it was not hard. It -yielded, and bounced sand particles away instead of resisting them. It -would outwear iron, in the daily sand blast, by a million times, on the -principle by which land vehicles on Earth use rubber tires instead of -metal, for greater wear. - -He cut away a flap of metal from the swelling. He tossed it away with -his space-gloved hands. His suit-flash illuminated the hollow within. -There was a motor inside, and it was remarkably familiar, though not a -motor such as men made for the purpose of turning things. There was a -shaft. There were four slabs of something that looked like graphite, -rounded to fit the shaft. That was all. No coils. No armature. No sign -of magnets. - -Men used this same principle, but for a vastly different purpose. Men -used the reactive thrust of allotropic graphite against an electric -current in their space ships. The Bowdoin-Hall field made such a thrust -incredibly efficient, and it was such graphite slabs that drove the -_Stallifer_--though these were monsters weighing a quarter of a ton -apiece, impossible for the skid to lift. Insulated cables led to the -slabs in wholly familiar fashion. The four cables joined to two and -vanished in the seemingly solid girders which formed all the giant grid. - -Almost without hope, Stan slashed through two cables with his torch. He -dragged out the recharging cable of the skid. He clipped the two ends -to the two cut cables. They sparked! Then he stared. The meter of the -skid showed current flowing into its power bank. An amazing amount of -current. In minutes, the power-storage needle stirred from its pin. In -a quarter of an hour it showed half-charge. Then a creaking began all -around. - -Stan leaped back to one of the cross-girders just as all the plates -in an area a mile square about him began to turn--all but the one -whose motor-housing he had cut through. All the other plates turned -so that their edges pointed to the stars. The sand piled on them by -the day storm poured down into the abyss beneath. Only the plate whose -motor-housing Stan had cut remained unmoving. Sparks suddenly spat -in the metal hollow, as if greater voltage had been applied to stir -the unmoving slab. A flaring, lurid, blue-white arc burned inside the -housing. Then it cut off. - -All the gigantic plates which had turned their edges skyward went -creaking loudly back to their normal position, their flat sides turned -to the stars. And nothing more happened. Nothing at all. - -In another ten minutes, the skid's meter showed that the power bank -was fully charged. And Stan, with plenty to think about, straddled the -little object and went soaring to northward like a witch on a broom, -sending a call on his suit-radio before him. - -"Coming, Esther! Give me a directional and let's make it fast! We've -got a lot to do before daylight!" - -He had traveled probably fifty miles before her signal came in. Then -there was a frantically anxious time until he found the little, -helpless space yacht, tumbled on the desert sand, with Esther peering -hopefully out of the air-lock as he swooped down to a clumsy landing. -She was warned and ready. There was no hope of repairing the drive. A -burned-out drive to operate in a Bowdoin-Hall field calls for bars of -allotropic graphite--graphite in a peculiar energy state as different -from ordinary graphite as carbon diamond is from carbon coal. There -were probably monster bars of just such stuff in the giant grid's -motors, but the skid could not handle them. For tonight, certainly, -repair was out of the question. Esther had hooked up a tiny, low-power -signaling device which gave out a chirping wave every five seconds. She -wore a space suit, had two abandon-ship kits, and all the water that -could be carried. - -The skid took off again. It was not designed to work in a planet's -gravitational field. It used too much power, and it wabbled -erratically, and for sheer safety Stan climbed high. With closed -faceplates the space-suited figures seemed to soar amid the stars. They -could speak only by radio, close together as they were. - -"Wh-where are we going, Stan?" - -"Icecap," said Stan briefly. "North Pole. There's water there--or -hoarfrost, anyhow. And the day storms won't be so bad if there are -storms at all. In the tropics on this planet the normal weather is a -typhoon-driven sandstorm. We'll settle down in the polar area and wait -for Rob Torren to come for us. It may be three months or more." - -"Rob Torren--" - -"He helped me escape," said Stan briefly. "Tell you later. Watch ahead." - -He'd had no time for emotional thinking since his landing, and -particularly since the landing of the little space yacht now sealed -up and abandoned to be buried under the desert sand. But he knew how -Esther came to be here. She'd told him, by radio, first off. She'd -had news of the charges Rob Torren had brought against him. She -hadn't believed them. Not knowing of his embarcation for Earth for -court-martial--the logical thing would have been a trial at advanced -base--she'd set out desperately to assure him of her faith. - -She couldn't get a liner direct, so she'd set out alone in her little -space yacht. In a sense, it should have been safe enough. Craft -equipped with Bowdoin-Hall drive were all quite capable of interstellar -flight. Power was certainly no problem any more, and with extra -capacitors to permit of low-frequency pulsations of the drive field, -and mapped dwarf white stars as course markers, navigation should be -simple enough. The journey, as such, was possibly rash but it was -not foolhardy. Only--she hadn't fused her drive when she changed its -pulsation-frequency. And when she was driving past Khor Alpha, her -Bowdoin-Hall field had struck the space skid on which Stan was trying -to make this planet, and the field had drained his power. - -The short circuit blew the skid's fuse, but it burned out the yacht's -more delicate drive. Specifically, it overloaded and ruined the -allotropic carbon blocks which made the drive work. So Esther's -predicament was caused not only by her solicitude for Stan, but by the -drive of the skid on which he'd escaped from the _Stallifer_. - - * * * * * - -He blamed himself. Bitterly. But even more he blamed Rob Torren. Hatred -surged up in him again for the man who had promised to come here and -fight him to the death. But he said quietly: - -"Rob's coming here after me. We'll talk about that later. He didn't -guess this place would be without water and with daily hurricanes -everywhere except--I hope!--the poles. He thought I'd be able to make -out until he could come back. We've got to! Watch out ahead for the -sunset line. We've got to follow it north until we hit the polar cap. -With water and our kits we should be able to survive indefinitely." - -The space-suited figures were close together--in fact, in contact. But -there was no feeling of touching each other through the insulating, -almost inflexible armor of their suits. And sealed as they were in -their helmets and communicating only by phone in the high stratosphere, -neither could feel the situation suitable for romance. Esther was -silent for a time. Then she said: - -"You told me you were out of power--" - -"I was," he told her. "I got some from the local inhabitants--if -they're local." - -"What--" - -He described the preposterous, meaningless structure on the desert. -Thousands of square miles in extent. Cryptic and senseless and of -unimaginable significance. - -"Every slab has a motor to turn it. I cut into a housing and there was -power there. I loaded up with it. I can't figure the thing out. There's -nowhere that a civilized or any other race could live. There's nothing -those slabs could be for!" - -There was a thin line of sunlight far ahead. Traveling north, they -drove through the night and overtook the day. They were very high -indeed, now, beyond atmosphere and riding the absurd small skid that -meteor miners use. They saw the dwarf white sun, Khor Alpha. Its rays -were very fierce. They passed over the dividing line between day and -night, and far, far ahead they saw the hazy whitishness which was the -polar cap of this planet. - -It was half an hour before they landed, and when they touched ground -they came simply to a place where wind-blown sand ceased to be powdery -and loose, and where there was plainly dampness underneath. The sun -hung low indeed on the horizon. On the shadow side of sand hillocks -there was hoarfrost. All the moisture of the planet was deposited in -the sand at its poles, and during the long winter nights the sand was -frozen so that even during the summer season unthinkable frigidity -crept out into every shadow. - -Stan nodded at a patch of frost on the darker site of a half-mile sand -dune. - -"Sleeping," he said dryly, "will be done in space suits. This ground -will be cold where the sun doesn't hit! Do you notice that there's no -sign of anything growing anywhere? Not even moss?" - -"It's too cold?" - -"Hardly!" said Stan. "Mosses and lichens grow on Earth as far north as -the ground ever thaws. And on every other planet I've ever visited. -There'd be plants here if anywhere, because there's water here. There -simply can't be any life on this planet. None at all!" - -Then the absurdity of the statement struck him. There was that -monstrous grid, made by intelligence of some sort and using vast -resources. But-- - -"Dammit!" said Stan. "How can there be life here? How can plants live -in perpetual sandstorms? How can animals live without plants to break -down minerals and make them into food? How can either plants or animals -live without water? If there were life anywhere, it would have to be -near water, which means here. And if there's none here there can't be -any at all--" - -They reached the top of the dune. Esther caught her breath. She pointed. - -There, reaching across the dampened sand, was a monstrous and a -horrifying trail. Something had come from the zones where the -sandstorms raged. It had passed this way, moving in one direction, and -it had passed again, going back toward the stormy wastes. By the trail, -it had ten or twelve or twenty legs, like some unthinkable centipede. -The tracks of its separate sets of legs were separated by fifteen feet. -And each footprint was two yards across. - - * * * * * - -For three days by the chrono on the space skid, the hard white sun Khor -Alpha circled the horizon without once setting. Which was natural, -because this was one of the poles of Khor Alpha's only planet, and this -was summer. In those three days Stan and Esther saw no living thing. No -bird, beast, or insect; no plant, moss, or lichen. They had planted -the seeds from their abandon-ship kits--included in such kits because -space castaways may have to expect to be isolated not for weeks or -months, but perhaps for all their lives. - -The weeds would produce artificially developed plants with amazing -powers of survival and adaptation and food production. On the fourth -day--clock time--the first of the plants appeared above the bank of -damp sand in which they had been placed. In seven days more there would -be food from them. If one plant of the lot was allowed to drop its own -seeds, in time there would be a small jungle of food plants on which -they could live. - -For the rest, they lived in a fashion lower than any savages of Earth. -They had no shelter. There was no building material but sand. They -slept in their space suits for warmth. They had no occupation save that -of waiting for the plants to bear food, and after that of waiting for -Rob Torren to come. - -And when he came--the presence of Esther changed everything. When -Torren arrived to fight a duel to the death with Stan, the stake was -to have been ultimately Esther's hand. But if she were present, if she -knew the true story of Torren's charges against Stan and their falsity, -he could have no hope of winning her by Stan's death. He would have -nothing to gain by a duel. But he would gain by the murder of one or -both of them. Safety from the remotest chance of later exposure, at any -rate, and revenge for the failure of his hopes. And if he managed to -kill Stan by any means, fair or foul, Esther would be left wholly at -his mercy. - -So Stan brooded, hating Rob Torren with a desperate intensity -surpassing even the hatred he'd felt on the _Stallifer_. A large part -of his hatred was due to helplessness. There was no way to fight back. -But he tried desperately to think of one. - -On the fourth day he said abruptly, "Let's take a trip, Esther." - -She looked at him in mute inquiry. - -"For power," he said "and maybe something more. We might be able to -find out something. If there are inhabitants on this planet, for -instance. There can't be, but there's that beast-- - -"Maybe it's somehow connected with whatever or whoever built that -grid--that checkerboard arrangement I told you about. Something or -somebody built that, but I can't believe anything can live in those -sandstorms." - -They'd followed the huge trail that had been visible on their first -landing in the polar regions. The great, two-yard-across pads of the -monster had made a clear trail for ten miles from the point of their -discovery. At the end of the trail there was a great gap in a cliff of -frozen sand. The Thing seemed to have devoured tons of ice-impacted -stuff. Then it had gone back into the swirling sandy wastes. It -carried away with it cubic yards--perhaps twenty or thirty tons--of -water-filled frozen sand. - -But reason insisted that there could be no animal life on a planet -without plants, and no plants on a desert which was the scene of -daily typhoons, hourly hurricanes, and with no water anywhere upon it -save at the poles. And there was no vegetation there. A monster with -dozens of six-foot feet, and able to consume tons of wetted sand for -moisture, would need vast quantities of food for energy alone. And it -was unthinkable that food was to be found in the strangling depths of -perpetual sandstorms. - -"There's another thing," Stan added. "With power to spare I could fuse -sand into something like a solid. Make a house, maybe, and chairs to -sit on, instead of having to wear our space suits all the time. Maybe -we could even heat the inside of a house!" - -Esther smiled at him. - -"Darling," she said wryly, "you've no idea how glad I'd be of a solid -floor to walk on instead of sand, and a chair to sit on, even if we -didn't have a roof!" - -They had been, in effect, in the position of earth-castaways marooned -on a sand-cay which had not even seashells on it or fish around it. -There was literally nothing they could do but talk. - -"And," she added, "if we could make a tub to take a bath in--" - -She brightened at the thought. Stan hadn't told her of his own reasons -for having no hope. There was no point in causing her despair in -advance. - -"We'll see what we see," he said. "Climb aboard." - -The space skid was barely five feet long. It had a steering bar and a -thick body which contained its power-storage unit and drive. And there -was the seat which one straddled, and the strap to hold its passenger. -Two people riding it in bulky space suits was much like riding double -on a bicycle, but Stan would not leave Esther alone. Not since they'd -seen that horrifying trail! - -They rose vertically and headed south in what was almost a rocket's -trajectory. Stan, quite automatically, had noted the time of sunrise at -the incredible structure beside which he'd landed. Later, he'd noted as -automatically the length of the planet's day. So to find his original -landing place he had only to follow the dawn line across the planet's -surface, with due regard for the time consumed in traveling. - -They were still two hundred miles out in space when he sighted the -grid. He slanted down to it. It was just emerging from the deep black -shadow of night. He swooped to a landing on one of the hundred-foot -slabs of hinged metal three hundred feet above ground. It was clear of -sand. It had obviously been dumped. - -Esther stared about her, amazed. - -"But--people made this, Stan!" she insisted. "If we can get in touch -with them--" - -"You sit over there," said Stan. He pointed to an intersection of the -criss-crossing girders. "It takes power to travel near a planet. My -power bank is half drained already. I'd better fill it up again." - -He got out his cutting-torch. He turned it upon a motor-housing. The -plastic coating frizzled and smoked. It peeled away. Metal flared -white-hot and melted. - -There was a monstrous creaking. All the plates in a square mile turned. -Swiftly. Only a desperate leap saved Stan from a drop to the desert -thirty stories below. - -The great slabs pointed their edges to the sky. Stan waited. Esther -said startledly; - -"That was on purpose, Stan!" - -"Hardly," said Stan. "They'll turn back in a minute." - -But they did not turn back. They stayed tilted toward the dawning sky. - -"You may be right, at that," said Stan. "We'll see. Try another place." - -Five minutes later they landed on a second huge slab of black metal, -miles away. Without a word, Stan ensconced Esther on the small platform -formed by crossing girders. He took out the torch again. The tiny, -blue-white flame. Smoke at its first touch. Metal flowed. - -With a vast cachinnation of squeakings, a mile-square section shifted -like the first.... - -"Something," said Stan grimly, "doesn't want us to have power. Maybe -they can stop us, and maybe not." - -The swelling which was the motor-housing was just within reach from -the immovable girder crossing on which Esther waited. Stan reached -out now. The torch burned with a quiet fierce flame. A great section -of metal fell away, exposing a motor exactly like the one he'd first -examined--slabs of allotropic graphite and all. He thrust in and cut -the cables. He reached in with the charging clips-- - -There was a crackling report in the space skid's body. Smoke came out. - - * * * * * - -Stan examined the damage with grimly set features. - -"Blew another fuse," he told Esther. "We're licked. When I took power -the first time, I ruined a motor. It's been found out. So the plates -turned, today, to--scare me away, perhaps, as soon as I cut into -another. When I didn't scare and severed the cables, high-voltage -current was shot into them to kill me or ruin whatever I was using the -power for. Whether there's life here or not, there's intelligence--and -a very unpleasant kind, too!" - -He re-fused the skid, scowling. - -"No attempt to communicate with us!" he said savagely. "They'd know -somebody civilized cut into that motor-housing! They'd know it was an -emergency! You'd think--" - -He stopped. A faint, faint humming sound became audible. It seemed to -come from nowhere in particular--or from everywhere. But it was not the -formless humming of a rising wind. This sound was a humming punctuated -by hurried, rhythmic clankings. It was oddly like the sound of cars -traveling over an old-fashioned railway--one with unwelded rail joints. -Then Esther jerked her head about. - -"Stan! Look there!" - -Something hurtled toward them in the gray dawn light. It was a machine. -Even in the first instant of amazement, Stan could see what it was -and what it was designed to do. It was a huge, bulbous platform above -stiltlike legs. At the bottoms of the legs were wheels. The wheels -ran on the cross-girders as on a railroad track, and the body of the -thing was upraised enough to ride well above the sidewise-tilted slabs. -There were other wheels to be lowered for travel on the girders which -supported the slabs. - -It was not a flying device, but a rolling one. It could travel in -either of two directions at right angles to each other, and had been -designed to run only on the great grid which ran beyond the horizon. -It was undoubtedly a maintaining machine, designed to reach any spot -where trouble developed, for the making of repairs, and it was of such -weight that even the typhoonlike winds of a normal day on this world -could not lift it from its place. - -It came hurtling toward them at terrific speed. It would roll -irresistibly over anything on the girders which were its tracks. - -"Get on!" snapped Stan. "Quick!" - -Esther moved as swiftly as she could, but space suits are clumsy -things. The little skid shot skyward only part of a second before the -colossus ran furiously over the place where they had been. A hundred -feet beyond, it braked and came to a seemingly enraged stop. It stood -still as if watching the hovering, tiny skid with its two passengers. - -"It looks disappointed," said Stan dourly. "I wonder if it wants to -chase us?" - -He sent the skid darting away. They landed. In seconds the vibration -caused by the huge machine's motion began and grew loud. They saw it -race into view. As it appeared, instantly a deafening clamor began. -Slabs in all directions rose to their vertical position, so that the -two humans could not dodge from one row of girders to another. And then -with a roar and a rush the thing plunged toward them once more. - -Again the skid took off. Again the huge machine overran the spot where -they had been, then stopped short as if baffled. Stan sent his odd -craft off at an angle. Instantly the gigantic thing was in motion, -moving in lightning speed in one direction, stopping short to move on a -new course at right angles to the first, and so progressing in zigzag -but very swift pursuit. - -"'Won't you land so I can crush you?' said the monster to us two," said -Stan dryly. "They won't let us have any more power, and we haven't any -more to waste. But still--" - -He listened to his suit-radio, twisting the tuning dials as he sent the -skid up in a spiral. - -"I'm wondering," he observed, "if they're trying to tell us something -by radio. And meanwhile I'd like a more comprehensive view of this -damned checkerboard!" - -A faint, faint, wavering whine came into the headphones. - -"There's something," he commented "Not a main communication wave, -though. A stray harmonic--and of a power beam, I think. They must use -plenty short waves!" - -But he was searching the deadly monotony of the grid below him as he -spoke. Suddenly, he pointed. All the area below them to the horizon -was filled with geometric shapes of grids and squares. But one space -was different from the rest. Four squares were thrown into one, there. -And as the skid dived for a nearer view, that one square was seen to be -a deep, hollow shaft going down toward the very vitals of this world. -As Stan looked, though, it filled swiftly with something rising from -its depths. The lifting thing was a platform, and things moved about on -it. - -"That's that!" said Stan hardly. - -He shot the skid away in level flight at topmost speed, with the great -rolling machine following helplessly and ragingly on its zigzag course -below. - -The horizon was dark, now, with the coming night. As Stan lifted -for the rocketlike trajectory that would take him back to the polar -regions, the white sun sank fiercely. There was a narrow space on which -the rays smote so slantingly that the least inequality of level was -marked by shadow. Gigantic sand dunes were outlined there. But beyond, -where the winds began, there was only featureless swirling dust. - -Stan was very silent all the way back. Only, once, he said calmly, "Our -power units will soak up a pretty big charge in a short time. We packed -away some power before the fuse blew." - -There was no comment for Esther to make. There was life on the planet. -It was life which knew of their existence and presence--and had tried -to kill them for the theft of some few megawatts of power. It would not -be easy to make terms with the life which held other life so cheaply. - -With the planet's only source of power now guarded, matters looked less -bright than before. But after they had reached the icecap, and when -they slanted down out of the airlessness to the spot which was their -home because their seeds had been planted there--as they dived down for -a landing, their real situation appeared. - -There was a colossal object with many pairs of legs moving back and -forth over the little space where their food plants sprouted. In days, -those plants would have yielded food. They wouldn't yield food now. - -Their garden was being trampled to nothingness by a multilegged machine -of a size comparable to the other machine which had chased them on -the grid. It was fifty feet high from ground to top, and had a round, -tanklike body all of twenty feet in diameter. Round projections at -one end looked like eyes. It moved on multiple legs which trampled in -orderly confusion. It stamped the growing plants to pulped green stuff -in the polar sand. It went over and over and over the place where -the food necessary for the humans' survival had promised to grow. It -stamped and stamped: It destroyed all hope of food. And it destroyed -all hope. - -Because, as Stan drove the skid down to see the machine more clearly, -it stopped in its stamping. It swung about to face him, with a -curiously unmachinelike ferocity. As Stan veered, it turned also. When -he sped on over it and beyond, it wheeled and came galloping with -surprising speed after him. - -Then they saw another machine. Two more. Three. They saw dark specks -here and there in the polar wastes, every one a machine like the one -which had tramped their food supply out of existence. And every one -changed course to parallel and approach the skid's line of travel. If -they landed, the machines would close in. - -There was only so much power. The skid could not stay indefinitely -aloft. And anywhere that they landed-- - - * * * * * - -But they did land. They had to. It was a thousand miles away, on the -dark side of the planet, in a waste of sand which looked frozen in the -starlight. The instant the skid touched ground, Stan made a warning -gesture and reached over to turn off Esther's suit-radio. He opened his -own face-plate and almost gasped at the chill of the midnight air. With -no clouds or water vapor to hinder it, the heat stored up by day was -radiated out to the awful chill of interstellar space at a rate which -brought below zero temperatures within hours of sundown. At the winter -pole of the planet, the air itself must come close to turning liquid -from the cold. But here, and now, Stan nodded in his helmet as Esther -opened her face-plate. - -"No radio," he told her. "They'll hardly be able to find us in several -million square miles if we don't use radio. But now you get some sleep. -We're going to have a busy time, presently!" - -Esther hesitated, and said desperately, "But--who are they? What are -they? Why do they want to kill us?" - -"They're the local citizens," said Stan. "I was wrong, there are -inhabitants. I've no more idea what they may be like than you have. -But I suspect they want to kill us simply because we're strangers." - -"But how could an intelligent race develop on a planet like this?" -demanded Esther unbelievingly. "How'd they stay alive while they were -developing?" - -Stan shrugged his shoulders. - -"Once you admit that a thing is so," he said dryly, "you can figure out -how it happened. This sun is a dwarf white star. That means that once -upon a time it exploded. It flared out into a nova. Maybe there were -other planets nearer to it than this, and they volatilized when their -sun blew up. Everything on this planet, certainly, was killed, and for -a long, long time after it was surely uninhabitable by any standard. -There's a dwarf star in the Crab Nebula which will melt iron four -light-hours away--land that was a nova twelve hundred years ago. It -must have been bad on this planet for a long time indeed. - -"I'm guessing that when the first explosion came the inner planets -turned to gas and this one had all its seas and forests and all its -atmosphere simply blasted away to nothingness. Everything living on its -surface was killed. Even bacteria in the soil turned to steam and went -off into space. That would account for the absolute absence of life -here now." - -"But--" said Esther. - -"But," said Stan, "the people--call them people--who lived here -were civilized even then. They knew what was coming. If they hadn't -interstellar drive, flight would do them no good. They'd have nowhere -to go. So maybe they stayed. Underground. Maybe they dug themselves -caves and galleries five--ten--twenty miles down. Maybe some of those -galleries collapsed when the blow-up came, but some of the people -survived. They'd stayed underground for centuries. They'd have to! It -might be fifty thousand years they stayed underground, while Khor Alpha -blazed less and less fiercely, and they waited until they could come up -again. - -"There was no air for a while up here. They had to fight to keep alive, -down in the planet's vitals. They made a new civilization, surrounded -by rock, with no more thought of stars. They'd be hard put to it for -power, too. They couldn't well use combustion, with a limited air -supply. They probably learned to transform heat to power direct. You -can take power--electricity--and make heat. Why not the other way -about? For maybe fifty thousand years, and maybe more, they had to -live without even thinking of the surface of their world. But as the -dwarf star cooled off, they needed its heat again." - -He stopped. He seemed to listen intently. But there was no sound in the -icy night. There were only bright, unwinking stars and an infinity of -sand--and cold. - -"So they dug up to the surface again," he went on. "Air had come back, -molecule by molecule from empty space, drawn by the same gravitation -that once had kept it from flying away. And the fused-solid rock of -the surface, baked by day and frozen by night, had cracked and broken -down to powder. When air came again and winds blew, it was sand. The -whole planet was desert. The people couldn't live on the surface again. -They probably didn't want to. But they needed power. So they built that -monster grid they're so jealous of." - -"You mean," Esther demanded incredulously, "that's a generator?" - -"A transformer," corrected Stan. "Solar heat to electricity. Back on -Earth the sun pours better than a kilowatt of energy on every square -yard of Earth's surface in the tropics--over three million kilowatts to -the square mile. This checkerboard arrangement is at least a hundred -and fifty by two hundred miles. The power's greater here, but, on -Earth, that would mean ninety thousand million kilowatts. More than a -hundred thousand million horsepower--more than the whole Earth uses -even now! - -"If those big slabs convert solar radiation into power--and I charged -up the skid from one of them--there's a reason for the checkerboard, -and there's a reason for dumping the sand--it would hinder gathering -power--and there's a reason for getting upset when somebody started to -meddle with it. And they're upset! They'll have the conservation of -moisture down to a fine point, down below, but they made those leggy -machines to haul more water, from the poles. When they set them all to -hunting us, they're very much disturbed! But luckily they'd never have -worked out anything to fly with underground and they're not likely to -have done so since--considering the storms and all." - -There was a short silence. Then Esther said slowly, "It's--very -plausible, Stan. I believe it. And they'd have no idea of space travel, -so they'd have no idea of other intelligent races, and actually they'd -never think of castaways. They wouldn't understand, and they'd try -to kill us to study the problem we presented. That's their idea, no -doubt. And they've all the resources of a civilization that's old and -scientific. They'll apply them all to get us--and they won't even think -of listening to us! Stan! What can we do?" - -Stan said amusedly, there in the still, frigid night of an unnamed -planet, "Why--we'll do plenty! We're barbarians by comparison with -them, Esther, and barbarians have equipment civilized men forget. All -savages have spears, but a civilized man doesn't even always carry a -pocketknife. If we can find the _Erebus_, we can probably defy this -whole planet--until they put their minds to developing weapons. But -right now you go to sleep. I'll watch." - -Esther looked at him dubiously. Five days of sandstorms should have -buried the little yacht irrecoverably. - -"If it's findable," she said. Then she added wistfully, "But it would -be nice to be on the _Erebus_ again. It would feel so good to walk -around without a space suit! And--" she added firmly, "after all, Stan, -we are engaged! And if you think I like trying to figure out some way -of getting kissed through an opened face-plate--" - -Stan said gruffly, "Go to sleep!" - - * * * * * - -He paced up and down and up and down. They were remarkably unlike -castaways in the space tale magazines. In those works of fiction, the -hero is always remarkably ingenious. He contrives shelters from native -growths on however alien a planet he and the heroine may have been -marooned; he is full of useful odd bits of information which enable -him to surprise her with unexpected luxuries, and he is inspired when -it comes to signaling devices. But in five days on this planet, Stan -had been able to make no use of any natural growth because there -weren't any. He'd found no small luxuries for Esther because there was -literally nothing about but sand. And there was strikingly little use -in a fund of odd bits of information when there was only desert to -apply it to--desert and sandstorms. - -What he'd just told Esther was a guess; the best guess he could make, -and a plausible one, but still a guess. The only new bit of information -he'd picked up so far was the way the local inhabitants made electric -motors. And he had to bet his and Esther's life on that! - -He watched the chrono. And a good half hour before night would strike -the checkerboard grid, he was verifying what few preparations he could -make. A little later he waked Esther. And just about twenty minutes -before the sunset line would reach the grid, they soared upward to -seek it. If Stan's plan didn't work, they'd die. He was going to -gamble their lives and the last morsel of power the skid's power unit -contained, on information gained in two peeps at slab-motors on the -grid, and the inference that all motors on this planet would be made -on the same principle. Of course, as a subsidiary gamble, he had also -to bet that he in an unarmed and wrecked space yacht could defy a -civilization that had lived since before Khor Alpha was a dwarf star. - -They soared out of atmosphere on a trajectory that saved power but was -weirdly unlike any normal way of traveling from one spot on a planet's -surface to another. Beneath them lay the vast expanse of the desert, -all dense, velvety black except for one blindingly bright area at its -western rim. That bright area widened as they neared it, overtaking the -day. Suddenly the rectangular edges of the grid shed appeared, breaking -the sharp edge of dusk. - -The _Erebus_ had grounded about fifty miles northward from the planet's -solitary structure. Stan turned on his suit-radio and listened -intently. There was no possible landmark. The dunes changed hourly -during the day and on no two days were ever the same. He skimmed the -settling sand clouds of the dusk belt. Presently he was sure he had -overshot his mark. - -He circled. He circled again. He made a great logarithmic spiral out -from the point he considered most likely. The power meter showed the -drain. He searched in the night, with no possible landmark. Sweat came -out on his face. - -Then he heard a tiny click. Sweat ran down his face. He worked -desperately to localize the signal Esther had set to working in the -yacht before she left it. When at last he landed and was sure the -_Erebus_ was under the starlit sand about him, he looked at the power -gauge and tensed his lips. He pressed his space helmet close to -Esther's, until it touched. He spoke, and his voice carried by metallic -conduction without the use of radio. - -"We might make it if we try now. But we're going to need a lot of power -at best. I'm going to gamble the local yokels can't trace a skid drive -and wait for morning, to harness the whirlwinds to do our digging for -us." - -Her voice came faintly back to him by the same means of communication. - -"All right, Stan." - -She couldn't guess his intentions, of course. They were probably -insane. He said urgently: - -"Listen! The yacht's buried directly under us. Maybe ten feet, maybe -fifty, maybe Heaven knows how deep! There's a bare chance that if we -get to it we can do something, with what I know now about the machines -in use here. It's the only chance I know, and it's not a good one. It's -only fair to tell you--" - -"I'll try anything," said her voice in his helmet, "with you." - -He swallowed. Then he stayed awake and desperately alert, his -suit-microphones at their highest pitch of sensitivity, during the long -and deadly monotonous hours of the night. - -There was no alarm. When the sky grayed to the eastward, he showed her -how he hoped to reach the yacht. The drive of the skid, of course, -was not a pulsatory field such as even the smallest of space yachts -used. It was more nearly an adaptation of a meteor-repeller beam, a -simple reactive thrust against an artificial-mass field. It was the -first type of drive ever to lift a ship from Earth. For take-off and -landing and purposes like meteor mining it is still better than the -pulsating-field drive by which a ship travels in huge if unfelt leaps. -But in atmosphere it does produce a tremendous black-blast of repelled -air. It is never used on atmosphere-flyers for that very reason, but -Stan proposed to make capital of its drawback for his purpose. - -When he'd finished his explanation, Esther was more than a little pale, -but she smiled gamely. - -"All right, Stan. Go ahead!" - -"We'll save power if we wait for the winds," he told her. - -Already, though, breezes stirred across the dawn-lit sand. Already they -were hot breezes. Already the fine, impalpable sand dust which settled -last at nightfall was rising in curious opaque clouds which billowed -and curled and blotted out the horizon. But the grid was hidden by the -bulge of the planet's surface. - -Stan pointed the little skid downward in a hollow he scooped out with -his space-gloved hands. He set the gyros running to keep it pointed -toward the buried yacht. He had Esther climb up behind him. He lashed -the two of them together, and strapped them to the skid. And he waited. - -In ten minutes after the first sand grains pelted on his armor, the sky -was hidden by the finer dust. In twenty there were great gusts which -could be felt even within the space suits. In half an hour a monster -gale blew. - -Stan turned on the space skid's drive. It thrust downward toward the -sand and the buried yacht. It thrust upward against the air and pelting -sand. - -In three-quarters of an hour the sandstorm had reached frenzied -violence--but the skid pushed down from within a little hollow. Its -drive thrust up a spout of air. That spout drew sand grains with it. -But it was needful to increase the power. After an hour a gigantic -whirlwind swept around them. It tore at the two people and the tiny -machine. It sucked up such a mass of powdery sand particles that their -impact on the space suits was like a savage blow. - -Emptiness opened beneath the skid as sand went whirling up in a -sandspout the exact equivalent of a waterspout at sea. Stan and Esther -and the skid itself would have been torn away by its violence but that -the skid's drive was on full, now. The absurd little traveler thrust -sturdily downward. When sand was drawn away by wind, it burrowed down -eagerly to make the most of its gain. - -Its back-thrust kept a steady, cone-shaped pressure on the sand which -would have poured in upon it. Stan and Esther were buried and uncovered -and buried again, but the skid fought valorously. It strove to dig -deeper and to fling away the sand that would have hidden it from view. -It remained, actually, at the bottom of a perpetually filling pit which -it kept from filling by a geyser of upflung sand from its drive. - - * * * * * - -In twenty minutes another whirlwind touched the pit briefly. The -skid--helped by the storm--dug deeper yet. There came other swirling -maelstroms.... - -The nose of the skid touched solidity. It had burrowed down nearly -fifty feet, with the aid of whirlwinds, and come to the yacht _Erebus_. - -But it was another hour before accident and fierce efforts on Stan's -part combined to let him reach the air-lock door, and maneuver the skid -to keep that doorway clear, and for Esther to climb in--followed by -masses of slithering sand--and Stan after her. - -Inside the buried yacht, Stan fumbled for lights. He made haste to -turn off the signaling device that had led him back to it deep under -the desert's surface. And it was strangely and wonderfully still here, -buried under thousands of tons of sand. - -Esther slipped out of her space suit and smiled tremulously at Stan. - -"Now?" - -"Now," said Stan, "if you want to, you can start cooking. We could do -with a civilized meal. And I'll see what I can do toward a slightly -less uncertain way of life." - -He went forward. The _Erebus_ was a small yacht, to be sure. It was -a bare sixty feet over-all, and of course as a pleasure craft it had -no actual armament. But within two bulging blisters at the bow the -meteor-repellers were mounted. In flight, in space, they could make -a two-way thrust against stray bits of celestial matter, so that if -a meteor was tiny it was thrust aside, or if too large the _Erebus_ -swerved away. - -From within, Stan changed the focus of the beams. They had been set -to send out tiny reaction beams no larger than a rifle bore. At ten -miles such a beam would be six inches across, and at forty a bare two -feet. He adjusted both to a quickly widening cone and pointed one up, -the other down. One would thrust violently against the sand under the -yacht, and the other against the sand over it. The surface sand, at -least, could rise and be blown away. The sand below would support the -yacht against further settling. - -He went back to where Esther laid out dishes. - -"I've started something," he told her. "One repeller beam points up to -make the sand over our heads effectively lighter so it can be blown -away more easily. The storm ought to burrow right down to us, with -that much help. After we're uncovered, we may, just possibly, be able -to work the ship up to the surface. But after that we've got to do -something else. The repellers aren't as powerful as a drive, and it's -hardly likely we could lift out of gravity on them. Even if we did, -we're a few light-centuries from home. To fix our interstellar drive we -need the help of our friends of the grid." - -Esther paused to stare. - -"But they'll try to kill us!" she protested. "They've tried hard! And -if they find us we've no weapons at all--not even a hand-blaster!" - -"To the contrary," said Stan dryly, "we've probably the most ghastly -weapon anybody ever invented--only it won't work on any other planet -than this." - -Then he grinned at her. Now, he too was out of his space suit. The food -he'd asked her to prepare was out on the table, but he ignored it. He -took one step toward her. And then there came a muffled sound, picked -up by the outside hull-microphones. It grew in volume. It became a -roar. Then the yacht shifted position. Its nose tilted upward. - -"The first step," said Stan, "is accomplished. I can't stop to dine. -But--" - -He kissed her hungrily. Five days--six, now--in space suits with the -girl one hopes to marry has its drawbacks. An armored arm around the -hulking shoulders of another suit of armor--even with a pretty girl -inside it--is not satisfying. To hold hands with three-eighth-inch -space gloves is less than romantic. And to try to kiss a girl -three-quarters buried in a space helmet leaves much to the imagination. -Stan kissed her. It took another shifting movement of the yacht, which -toppled them the length of the cabin, to make him stop. - -Then he laughed and went to the control room. - -Vision screens were useless, of course. The little ship was still most -of her length under sand, but the repellers' cones of thrust had dug a -great pit down to her. Now Stan juggled the repellers to take fullest -advantage of the storm. At times--with both beams pushing up--the ship -was perceptibly lifted by uprushing air. And Stan could be prodigal -with power, now. The skid was sharply limited in its storage of energy, -but all the space between the two skins of the _Erebus_ was a power -bank. It could travel from one rim of the Galaxy to the other without -exhausting its store. And the upward lift of whirlwinds--once there -were six within ten minutes--and the thrusts of the repellers gradually -edged the _Erebus_ to the surface. - -Before nightfall it no longer lay in a sand pit. It was only half -buried in sand. And when the winds died down to merely savage gales, -at twilight, and then slowly diminished to more angry gusts, and at -long last there was calm without and even the impalpable fine dust that -settled last no longer floated in the air, and the stars shone--then -Stan was ready. - -He turned on the ship's communicator and sent a full-power wave out -into the night. He spoke. What he said would be unintelligible, of -course, but he said sardonically to the empty desert: - -"Yacht _Erebus_ calling! Down on the desert, every drive smashed, and -not so much as a hand-blaster on board for a weapon. Maybe you'd like -to come and get us!" - -Then--and only then--he went and ate the long delayed meal Esther had -made ready. - -It was half an hour before the microphones gave warning. Then they -relayed clankings and poundings and thuddings on the sand. It was the -sound of heavy machines marching toward the _Erebus_. Scores of them. -The machines separated and encircled the disabled yacht, though they -were invisible behind the dunes all about. And then, simultaneously, -they closed in. - -The landing beams of the _Erebus_ flashed out. Light flickered in the -chill darkness. The beams darted here and there. - -Then the machines appeared. The scene was remarkable. Over the dunes -marched gigantic metal monsters, many-legged, with bodies as great as -the _Erebus_ itself. Great bulges on their forward parts gave the look -of eyes, as if these were huge insects marching to devour and destroy. -As the landing-light beams flickered from one to another of them, huge -metallic tusks appeared, and toothed jaws--used for excavation. They -were not machines designed for war, but they were terrifying, and they -could be terrible. - -Esther's hand on Stan's shoulder trembled as the monsters closed in. -And then Stan, in the unarmed and seemingly defenseless little space -yacht, swung the meteor-repeller controls and literally cut them to -pieces. - -"We're barbarians," said Stan, "compared to these folk. So we've an -advantage. It's likely to be only temporary, though!" - - * * * * * - -He watched the carcasses of the great machines, flicking the -landing-light beams back and forth. They were tumbled terribly on the -ground. Some were severed in two or three places, and their separate -sections sprawled astonishedly on a dune-side. One was split through -lengthwise. Another had all of one set of legs cut off clean, and lay -otherwise unharmed but utterly helpless. - -Out of that incapacitated giant a smaller version of itself crawled. -It was like a lifeboat. Stan watched. Other small versions of the -great machines appeared. One made a dash at the _Erebus_, and he -cut it savagely in two. There was no other attack. Instead, the -smaller many-legged machines ran busily from one to another of the -wrecks--seeming to gather up survivors--and then went racing away into -the dark. - -Then there was stillness. - -"They knew we saw them," said Stan grimly. "They knew we could smash -them. And they realized that we wouldn't unless they attacked again. I -wonder what they think of us now?" - -"What you did to them was--awful," said Esther. She shuddered. "I still -don't know what it was. I never heard of any weapon like that!" - -"It could only exist here," said Stan. He grimaced. "We've -meteor-repellers. They push away anything in their beam. I narrowed -them to their smallest size and put full power into them. That was all." - -"But meteor-repellers don't cut!" protested Esther. - -"These did," said Stan. "They were working through sand, just that. -They pushed it. With a force of eighty tons in a half-inch beam. -The sand that was in the beam was shot away with an acceleration of -possibly fifty thousand gravities--and more sand kept falling into the -beam. Each particle was traveling as fast as a meteor when it hit, -over there. When it struck, it simply flared to incandescent vapor. No -atomic torch was ever hotter! And there was no end to the sand I threw. -You might say I cut those machines up with a sand blast, but there was -never such a sand blast as this! It took a barbarian--like me--to think -of it! - -"Now," he added, "I need to go over to those machines and get some -stuff I think they've got in them. That's what I provoked this attack -for. But maybe the drivers are laying low to jump on me if I try it. -I'll have to wait until nearly dawn. They won't risk waiting until -almost time for the sandstorms! Not with fifty miles to travel back to -the grid!" - -He stayed on guard. Presently he yawned. He stood up and paced back -and forth, glancing from time to time at the screen. After a long time -Esther said: - -"You didn't sleep last night, Stan. Could I watch for a while so you -can rest?" - -"M'm-m. Yes. If anything stirs, wake me. But I don't look for action -here. The real action will be back underground." - -He went back into the cabin and threw himself down. Almost instantly -he was asleep. Esther watched the vision-plates dutifully. There was -silence and stillness everywhere. After a long time she looked in on -the sleeping Stan. A little later she looked in again, reached over, -and touched his hair gently. Later still she looked in yet again. She -kissed him lightly--he did not wake--and went back to the control -cabin, to watch the vision-plates. - -Nothing happened. - -Out in space, though, very many millions of miles away, a tiny mote -winked into existence as if by magic, with the cutting off of its -Bowdoin-Hall field drive. It hung seemingly motionless for a while, as -if orienting itself. It seemed to locate what it sought--and vanished, -but again winked into being a bare few thousand miles from the planet's -surface. - -It did not disappear again. It drove down toward the half-obscured disk -at the normal acceleration of a landing drive. Toward dawn it screamed -down into atmosphere above the planet's surface. It drove on into the -day, and into howling winds and far-flung sand. It rose swiftly, and -went winging toward the summer polar cap. - -Khor Alpha's single planet had gone unvisited by men during two -centuries of interstellar travel, but now there had been three separate -visitations within ten days. - -The last of the three visitors settled to ground where hoarfrost partly -whitened the desert's face. A full-power carrier-wave spread out from -it. And in the control room of the _Erebus_ a speaker suddenly barked -savagely: - -"Stan Buckley! I'm here to kill you! Communicate!" - -Esther gasped. She recognized the voice. Rob Torren! Back more than -two months before Stan had expected him! The words did not make sense -to her. Stan had tried to spare her despair by concealing the fact -that Torren's return would be to kill him, under a compact which her -presence here made void. - -"Rob!" cried Esther softly into the transmitter. "Rob Torren! It's -Esther calling! Esther Hume!" - -An indescribable sound from the speaker. With trembling hands she -adjusted the vision receiver. She looked into the taut, drawn, raging -features of Rob Torren. He stared at her out of the screen. - -"Stan's asleep, Rob!" cried Esther eagerly. "He didn't expect you back -for a long time yet! You're wondering how I got here? Oh--" - -Laughing a little, joyously, she told of her desperate voyage to be -with Stan when he should be tried, and how her drive had been burnt out -by impinging on the drive of the space skid on which Stan had left the -_Stallifer_. And of course she told of her subsequent meeting with Stan. - -"And there are inhabitants here," she finished eagerly, "and they've -been trying to kill us." - -She was all joy and relief at Torren's arrival. But his face was -ravaged by conflicting emotions, all of them intense and all harrowing. - -"But--what's the matter, Rob?" she asked. "You look so queer!" Then she -added in abrupt, startled doubt. "And Rob! Why did you say you had come -back to kill Stan? You were joking, weren't you?" - -He raged at her instantly. "He coached you, eh? To pretend you didn't -know anything? Trying to make me take you both to safety on a promise -of fighting me later? It won't work! I've a line on your wave and I'll -be coming! I'll be coming fast! And maybe you've no weapons, but I -have! I've a Space Guard one-man ship! I forced the _Stallifer_ to dock -at Lora Beta and put me ashore! I got this ship to hunt back for Stan, -claiming his recapture as my responsibility! I did plan to have him -write you a letter before I killed him, but since you know everything -now--" - -She saw the beginning of an infuriated movement. Then the screen went -blank. - -After a moment's frightened irresolution she went to Stan. She woke -him, and after the first three words he was sternly alert. - -"This sets things up nicely!" he said bitterly. "You didn't know about -him, of course, but--our friends of the grid are concocting weapons -to destroy us, and now he's streaking here along his locator line to -blast us with everything a Space Guard ship can carry! And he'll have -long-range stuff! He can burn us to a crisp if we put a repeller beam -on him! We can't sand-blast him! We can't--" - -He began to struggle swiftly into a space suit. Esther said: - -"Wherever you're going, I'm going too!" - -"You're not!" he said harshly. "You'll go in the control room with your -hands on the beam controls. If some of the local citizens are hiding in -those wrecks, you'll smash them if they jump me! I haven't so much as a -pocketknife! You've got to be my weapons while I dig into those wrecks!" - - * * * * * - -He went swiftly out the air-lock with only a cutting-torch in his -hands. He fairly ran toward the débris of the attacking army of -machines. He reached the first. It had been sliced longitudinally in -half by a stream of sand particles traveling at fifty miles or better -per second, in a stream of air of the same velocity. Nothing could have -withstood such an attack. No material substance in the universe could -have resisted it. Four-inch plates of steel and foot-thick girders had -been cut through like so much dough, the severed edges gone not to -liquid but to vapor in the deadly stream. - -The whole mechanism of the machine was exposed. The great biting jaws, -designed to tear away huge masses of intermingled sand and ice. The -tusks to break loose sections for the jaws to handle. The tanks to -contain the precious damp material. The machine had not been made for -fighting, but it, alone, could have torn the _Erebus_ to fragments. -With an army of such machines-- - -Stan clambered into the neatly halved shell with his cutting-torch. All -about him were small devices, cryptic things, the strictly practical -contrivances of a hundred-thousand-year-old civilization. He itched -to examine them, but he needed certain bars of allotropic graphite -he suspected would be here. They were. The motors which ran the leg -movements were motors like those which turned the great slabs. They -consisted of slabs of graphite and the metal which slid past them. That -was all. Only one special allotrope of graphite makes a motor of such -simplicity. Only-- - -He burdened himself with black, flaky bars, cutting ruthlessly through -machinery to which an engineer would have devoted months of study. He -had an even dozen of the bars in his arms when a sudden blast rocked -him. He whirled, and saw a small cloud of still incandescent vapor and -Something which was separating horribly into many steaming pieces. -Other Things seemed to leap to smother him under their weight. He could -not see them save as vague shapes, but he knew they were there. - -Another exploded as Esther, in the _Erebus_ and watching with the -infrared scanner, desperately used the weapon which had never existed -before and could not be used anywhere save on this one planet. - -Stan ran clumsily for the ship over the drifting, powdery sand. -Inhumanly resolute unhuman things leaped after him. He saw the flares -as Esther destroyed them. He knew that she was wide eyed and trembling -and sick with horror at what she had to do. - -But he stumbled into the air-lock and dogged it shut behind him. And -Esther came running to greet him, not shaking and not trembling and not -horrified, but with burning eyes and the fiery anger of a Valkyrie. She -was not wearing her space suit. - -"They tried to kill you!" she cried fiercely. "They were hiding! -They'd have murdered you--" - -He put down his bars of allotropic graphite. He reached out to take her -in his arms. But-- - -"Damn these space suits!" he said furiously. "You'll have to wait to be -kissed until this job's finished!" - -He tore up the flooring hatch above the little ship's drive. He jerked -off the housing. - -"Keep watch!" he called to the control room. "At least one of the -machines must be waiting behind the dunes, hoping for a break!" - -He worked with frantic haste, shedding his space suit by convulsive -movements. This should have been the most finicky of fine-fitting -jobs. To repair a Bowdoin-Hall drive unit by replacing its graphite -bars for maximum efficiency is a matter for micrometric precision. -But efficiency was not what he wanted, now, but speed. And these bars -almost fitted. They were vastly unlike the five-hundred-pound monsters -for the grid slabs. These should at least move the ship, and if the -ship could be moved-- - -He had two of them in place and six more to go when the speaker in the -control room blared triumphantly. - -"Stan Buckley! Tune in! I'm right above your ship! Tune in!" - -Stan swore in a sick disgust. Two out of eight was not enough. He was -helpless for lack, now, of time. And the corrosive hatred that comes -of helplessness filled him. He went into the control room and said -drearily to Esther: - -"Sorry, my dear. Another twenty minutes and you'd have been safe. I -think we lose." - -He kissed her, and with fury-steadied fingers tuned in the -communication-plate. Rob Torren grinned furiously at him. - -"I thought I'd let you know what's happening," said Torren in a voice -that was furry with whipped-up rage. "I'm going to go back and report -that you were killed resisting arrest. I'm going to melt down the yacht -until it could never be identified as the _Erebus_--if anybody ever -sees it again! And--maybe you'll enjoy knowing that I did the things I -charged you with, and have the proceeds safely banked away! I faked the -evidence that proved it on you. And I hoped to have Esther, too, but -she's spoiled that by trying to come and help you! Now--" - -"Now," said Stan coldly, "you'll stand off a good twenty miles and beam -us. You'll take no chances that we might be able to throw a handful -of sand at you! You'll be so damned cautious that you won't even come -close to see your success with your own eyes! You'll read it off on -instruments! You're pretty much afraid of me!" - -"Afraid?" raged Rob Torren. "You'll see!" - -The communication screen went blank. Stan leaped to the meteor-repeller -controls and stared at the vertical vision-plate which showed all the -sky above. - -"Not the shadow of a chance," he said coldly, "but a beam does make a -little glow! If he misses us once--but he won't--maybe I can get in one -blast...." - -There was tense silence. Deadly silence. The screen overhead showed a -multitude of cold, unwinking stars. One of them winked out and on again. - -"I'll try--" began Stan. - -Then the screen seemed to explode into light. Something flared like -a nova in the sky. Intolerable brilliance filled a quarter of the -screen--and faded. Swiftly. It went out. - -Stan drew a deep breath. - -"That," he said softly, "I think was a hundred thousand million -horsepower in a power beam. I think our friends the grid makers have -been working on armament to fight us with, and I think they've got -something quite good! They don't like strangers. Torren was a stranger, -and they got a shot at him, and they took it. And now they'll get set -to come over here after us. If you'll excuse me, I'll go back to the -drive!" - -He returned to the cabin where two out of a necessary eight graphite -bars were in place. He worked. Fast. No man ever worked so fast or so -fiercely or with such desperately steady hands. In twenty minutes he -made the last, the final connection. And just as he dropped the hatch -in place, Esther called anxiously: - -"More machines coming, Stan! The microphones pick them up!" - -"Coming!" he told her briskly. He went to the instrument board and -threw switches here and there. "The normal thing," he said evenly, -"would be to lift from the ground here, on landing drive, and go into -field drive out of atmosphere. But we won't do it for two reasons. One -is that we have no landing drive. The other is that at normal take-off -acceleration, our friends of the grid would take a potshot at us with -the thing they used on Rob Torren. With a hundred thousand million -horsepower. So--here goes!" - -He stabbed a simple push button. - -With no perceptible interval and with no sensation of movement, the -_Erebus_ was out in deep space. The screens showed stars on every -side--all the stars of the Galaxy. And these were not the hostile, -immobile, unfriendly stars the first voyagers of space had seen. With -the Bowdoin-Hall field collapsing forty times a second, the stars moved -visibly. The nearer ones moved more swiftly and the farther ones more -slowly, but all moved. The cosmos seemed very small and almost cosy, -and the stars mere fireflies and the Rim itself no more than a few -miles away from them. - -Stan watched. He said, "We're not making much time. Not over six -hundred lights, I'd say. But we'll get there." - -"And--and when we do--" - -"H'm," said Stan. "You can swear Torren said he'd committed the crimes -he charged me with and faked the evidence against me. With that -testimony, they'll examine the evidence as they do when there are no -witnesses. It'll fall down. And I'll be cleared." - -"Stan!" said Esther indignantly. "I meant--" - -"And when I'm cleared," said Stan, "we'll get married." - -"That," admitted Esther, "is what I had in mind." - -He kissed her, and stood watching the moving cosmos critically. - -"Our friends the grid builders have gotten waked up now," he observed. -"They know they're not the only intelligent race in the universe, and -they may not like it. They're a fretful crew! But they'll have to be -made friends with. And quick, or they might cause trouble! I think I'll -apply to be assigned to the task force that will undertake the job. It -ought to be interesting! Not a dull moment!" - -Esther scowled at him. - -"Now," she protested, "you reduce me to being glad we're not making our -proper speed! Because after you get back--" - -"Listen, my dear," said Stan generously, "I'll promise to come home -from time to time. And when I do I'll grab you like this, and kiss you -like this--" There was an interlude. "And do you think you'll manage to -survive?" - -Esther gasped for breath. But she was smiling. - -"I--I think I'll be able to stand it," she admitted. - -"Good!" said Stan. "Now let's go have some breakfast!" - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLANET OF SAND *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Planet of sand</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Murray Leinster</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 16, 2022 [eBook #68331]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLANET OF SAND ***</div> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>PLANET OF SAND</h1> - -<h2>By Murray Leinster</h2> - -<p><i>Tossed into the trackless Cosmos by his<br /> -mortal enemy, shipwrecked on an unfriendly<br /> -star, he determined to defy the dangers of<br /> -numberless nights, and, hunted turned<br /> -hunter, keep a tryst with Hate....</i></p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Famous Fantastic Mysteries, February 1948.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/> - <div class="caption"> - <p>He debated straggling farther under the shelter of the monstrous roof....</p> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>There was bright, pitiless light in the prison corridor of the -<i>Stallifer</i>. There was the hum of the air-renewal system. Once in every -so often there was a cushioned thud as some item of the space ship's -machinery operated some relay somewhere. But it was very tedious to be -in a confinement cell. Stan Buckley—Lieutenant, J.G., Space Guard, -under charges and under restraint—found it rather more than tedious.</p> - -<p>He should have been upheld, perhaps, by the fact that he was innocent -of the charges made against him by Rob Torren, formerly his immediate -superior officer. But the feeling of innocence did not help. He sat in -his cell, holding himself still with a grim resolution. But a deep, a -savage, a corrosive anger grew and grew and grew within him. It had -been growing in just this manner for weeks.</p> - -<p>The <i>Stallifer</i> bored on through space. From her ports the cosmos -was not that hostile, immobile curtain of unwinking stars the early -interstellar travelers knew. At twelve hundred light-speeds, with the -Bowdoin-Hall field collapsing forty times per second for velocity -control, the stars moved visibly. Forty glimpses of the galaxy about -the ship in every second made it seem that the universe was always in -view.</p> - -<p>And the stars moved. The nearer ones moved swiftly and the farther ones -more slowly, but all moved. And habit made motion give the feeling of -perspective, so that the stars appeared to be distributed in three -dimensions and from the ship seemed very small, like fireflies. All the -cosmos seemed small and almost cosy. The Rim itself appeared no more -than a few miles away. But the <i>Stallifer</i> headed for Earth from Rhesi -II, and she had been days upon her journey, and she had come a distance -which it would stagger the imagination to compute.</p> - -<p>In his cell, though, Stan Buckley could see only four walls. There was -no variation of light; no sign of morning or night or afternoon. At -intervals, a guard brought him food. That was all—except that his deep -and fierce and terrible anger grew until it seemed that he would go mad -with it.</p> - -<p>He had no idea of the hour or the day when, quite suddenly, the -pitiless light in the corridor dimmed. Then the door he had not seen -since his entrance into the prison corridor clanked open. Footsteps -came toward his cell. It was not the guard who fed him. He knew that -much. It was a variation of routine which should not have varied until -his arrival on Earth.</p> - -<p>He sat still, his hands clenched. A figure loomed outside the cell -door. He looked up coldly. Then fury so great as almost to be frenzy -filled him. Rob Torren looked in at him.</p> - -<p>There was silence. Stan Buckley's muscles tensed until it seemed that -the bones of his body creaked. Then Rob Torren said caustically:</p> - -<p>"It's lucky there are bars, or there'd be no chance to talk! Either -you'd kill me and be beamed for murder, or I'd kill you and Esther -would think me a murderer. I've come to get you out of this if you'll -accept my terms."</p> - -<p>Stan Buckley made an inarticulate, growling noise.</p> - -<p>"Oh, surely!" said Rob Torren. "I denounce you, and I'm the witness -against you. At your trial, I'll be believed and you won't. You'll -be broken and disgraced. Even Esther wouldn't marry you under such -circumstances. Or maybe," he added sardonically, "maybe you wouldn't -let her!"</p> - -<p>Stan Buckley licked his lips. He longed so terribly to get his hands -about his enemy's throat that he could hardly hear his words.</p> - -<p>"The trouble is," said Rob Torren, "that she probably wouldn't marry me -either, if you were disgraced by my means. So I offer a bargain. I'll -help you to escape—I've got it all arranged—on your word of honor to -fight me. A duel. To the death." His eyes were hard. His tone was hard. -His manner was almost contemptuous. Stan Buckley said hoarsely:</p> - -<p>"I'll fight you anywhere, under any conditions!"</p> - -<p>"The conditions," Rob Torren told him icily, "are that I will help you -to escape. You will then write a letter to Esther, saying that I did -so and outlining the conditions of the duel as we agree upon them. I -will, in turn, write a letter to the Space Guard brass, withdrawing my -charges against you. We will fight. The survivor will destroy his own -letter and make use of the other. Do you agree to that?"</p> - -<p>"I'll agree to anything," said Stan Buckley fiercely, "that will get my -hands about your throat!"</p> - -<p>Rob Torren shrugged.</p> - -<p>"I've turned off the guard photocells," he said calmly. "I've a key for -your cell. I'm going to let you out. I can't afford to kill you except -under the conditions I named, or I'll have no chance to win Esther. If -you kill me under any other conditions, you'll simply be beamed as a -murderer." He paused, and then added, "And I have to come and fight you -because a letter from you admitting that I've behaved honorably is the -only possible thing that would satisfy Esther. You give your word to -wait until you've escaped and I come for you before you try to kill me?"</p> - -<p>Stan Buckley hesitated a long, long time. Then he said in a thick -voice, "I give my word."</p> - -<p>Without hesitation, Rob Torren put a key in the cell door and turned -it. He stood aside. Stan Buckley walked out, his hands clenched. Torren -closed the door and re-locked it. He turned his back and walked down -the corridor. He opened the door at its end. Again he stood aside. Stan -Buckley went through. Torren closed the door, took a bit of cloth from -his pocket, wiped off the key, hung it up again on a tiny hook, with -the same bit of cloth threw a switch, and put the cloth back in his -pocket.</p> - -<p>"The photocells are back on," he said in a dry voice. "They say you're -still in your cell. When the guard contradicts them, you'll seem to -have vanished into thin air."</p> - -<p>"I'm doing this," said Stan hoarsely, "to get a chance to kill you. Of -course I've no real chance to escape!"</p> - -<p>That was obvious. The <i>Stallifer</i> was deep in the void of interstellar -space. She traveled at twelve hundred times the speed of light. Escape -from the ship was impossible. And concealment past discovery when the -ship docked was preposterous.</p> - -<p>"That remains to be seen," said Torren coldly. "Come this way."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Torren went down a hallway. He slipped into a narrow doorway, -unnoticeable unless one was looking for it. Stan followed. He found -himself in that narrow, compartmented space between the ship's inner -and outer skins. A door; another compartment; another door. Then a tiny -air-lock—used for the egress of a single man to inspect or repair such -exterior apparatus as the scanners for the ship's vision screens. There -was a heap of assorted apparatus beside the air-lock door.</p> - -<p>"I prepared for this," said Torren curtly. "There's a space suit. -Put it on. Here's a meteor miner's space skid. There are supplies. I -brought this stuff as luggage, in water-tight cases. I'll fill the -cases with my bath water and get off the ship with the same weight of -luggage I had when I came on. That's my cover-up."</p> - -<p>"And I?" asked Stan harshly.</p> - -<p>"You'll take this chrono. It's synchronized with the ship's navigating -clock. At two-two even you push off from the outside of the ship. The -drive field fluctuates. When it collapses, you'll be outside it. When -it expands—"</p> - -<p>Stan Buckley raised his eyebrows. This was clever! The Bowdoin-Hall -field, which permits of faster-than-light travel, is like a pulsating -bubble, expanding and contracting at rates ranging from hundreds of -thousands of times per second to the forty-per-second of deep-space -speed. When the field is expanding, and bars of an artificial allotrope -of carbon are acted upon by electrostatic forces in a certain -scientific fashion, a ship and all its contents accelerate at a rate -so great that it simply has no meaning. As the field contracts, a ship -decelerates again. That is the theory, at any rate. There is no proof -in sensation or instrument readings that such is the case. But velocity -is inversely proportional to the speed of the field's pulsations, and -only in deep space does a ship dare slow the pulsations too greatly, -for fear of complications.</p> - -<p>However, a man in a space suit could detach himself from a space ship -traveling by the Bowdoin-Hall field. He could float free at the instant -of the field's collapse, and be left behind when it expanded again. But -he would be left alone in illimitable emptiness.</p> - -<p>"You'll straddle the space skid," said Torren shortly. "It's full -powered—good for some millions of miles. At two-two exactly the -<i>Stallifer</i> will be as close to Khor Alpha as it will go. Khor Alpha's -a dwarf white star that's used as a course marker. It has one planet -that the directories say has a breathable atmosphere, and list as a -possible landing refuge, but which they also say is unexamined. You'll -make for that planet and land. You'll wait for me. I'll come!"</p> - -<p>Stan Buckley said in soft ferocity, "I hope so!"</p> - -<p>Torren's rage flared.</p> - -<p>"Do you think I'm not as anxious to kill you as you are to kill me?"</p> - -<p>For an instant the two tensed, as if for a struggle to the death there -between the two skins of the space ship. Then Torren turned away.</p> - -<p>"Get in your suit," he said curtly. "I'll get a private flyer and come -after you as soon as the hearing about your disappearance is over. Push -off at two-two even. Make it exact!"</p> - -<p>He went angrily away, and Stan Buckley stared after him, hating him, -and then grimly turned to the apparatus that lay in an untidy heap -beside the air-lock door.</p> - -<p>Five minutes later he opened the outer door of the lock. He was clad -in space armor and carried with him a small pack of supplies—the -standard abandon-ship kit—and the little space-drive unit. The unit -was one of those space skids used by meteor miners—merely a shaft -which contained the drive and power unit, a seat, and a cross-shaft by -which it was steered. It was absurdly like a hobby-horse for a man in -a space suit, and it was totally unsuitable for interplanetary work -because it consumed too much power when fighting gravity. For Stan, -though, starting in mid-space and with only one landing to make, it -should be adequate.</p> - -<p>He locked the chrono where he could see it on the steering bar. He -strapped the supply kit in place. He closed the air-lock door very -softly. He waited, clinging to the outer skin of the ship with magnetic -shoes.</p> - -<p>The cosmos seemed very small and quite improbable. The specks of light -which were suns seemed to crawl here and there. Because of their motion -it was impossible to think of them as gigantic balls of unquenchable -fire. They moved! To all appearances, the <i>Stallifer</i> flowed onward in -a cosmos perhaps a dozen miles in diameter, in which many varicolored -fireflies moved with a vast deliberation.</p> - -<p>The hand of the chrono moved, and moved, and moved. At two-two -exactly, Stan pressed the drive stud. At one instant he and his -improbable space steed rested firmly against a thousand-foot hill of -glistening chrom-steel. The waverings of the Bowdoin-Hall field were -imperceptible. The cosmos was small and limited and the <i>Stallifer</i> was -huge. Then the skid's drive came on. It shot away from the hull—and -the ship vanished as utterly as a blown-out candle flame. And the -universe was so vast as to produce a cringing sensation in the man who -straddled an absurd small device in such emptiness, with one cold white -sun—barely near enough to show a disk—and innumerable remote and -indifferent stars on every hand.</p> - -<p>On the instant when the ship's field contracted and left him outside, -Stan had lost the incredible velocity the field imparts. In the -infinitesimal fraction of a second required for the field to finish -its contraction after leaving him, the ship had traveled literally -thousands of miles. In the slightly greater fraction of a second -required for it to expand again, it had moved on some millions of -miles. By the time Stan's mind had actually grasped the fact that he -was alone in space, the ship from which he had separated himself was -probably fifty or sixty millions of miles away.</p> - -<p>He was absolutely secure against recapture, of course. If his escape -went unnoticed for even half a minute, it would take all the ships of -all the Space Guard a thousand years to search the volume of space in -which one small space-suited figure might be found. And it was unlikely -that his escape would be noticed for hours.</p> - -<p>He was very terribly alone. A dwarf white sun glowed palely, many, many -millions of miles away. Stars gazed at him incuriously, separated by -light-centuries of space.</p> - -<p>He started the minute gyroscopes that enabled him to steer the skid. -He started in toward the sun. He had a planet to find and land on. Of -course, Rob Torren could simply have contrived his escape to emptiness -so that he might die and shrivel in the void, and never, never, never -through all eternity be found again. But somehow, Stan had a vast faith -in the hatred which existed between the two of them.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>It was two days later when he approached the solitary planet of Khor -Alpha. The air in his space suit had acquired that deadly staleness -which is proof that good air is more than merely a mixture of oxygen -and nitrogen. He felt the sluggish discomfort which comes of bottled, -repurified breathing-mixture. And as the disk of the planet grew large, -he saw little or nothing to make him feel more cheerful.</p> - -<p>The planet rotated as he drew near, and it seemed to be absolutely -featureless. The terminator—the shadow line as sunlight encroached -on the planet's night side—was a perfect line. There were, then, no -mountains. There were no clouds. There seemed to be no vegetation. -There was, though, a tiny polar icecap—so small that at first he -did not discover it. It was not even a dazzling white, but a mere -whitishness where a polar cap should be, as if it were hoarfrost -instead of ice.</p> - -<p>He went slanting down to match the planet's ground speed in his -approach. Astride the tiny space skid, he looked rather like an -improbable witch astride an incredible broomstick. And he was very, -very tired.</p> - -<p>Coming up in a straight line, half the planet's disk was night. Half -the day side was hidden by the planet's bulge. He actually saw no more -than a quarter of the surface at this near approach, and that without -magnification.</p> - -<p>Any large features would have been spotted from far away, but he had -given up hope of any variation from monotony when—just as he was about -to enter the atmosphere—one dark patch in the planet's uniformly -dazzling white surface appeared at the very edge of day. It was at the -very border of the dawn belt. He could be sure only of its existence, -and that it had sharp, specifically straight edges.</p> - -<p>He saw rectangular extensions from the main mass of it. Then he hit -atmosphere, and the thin stuff thrust at him violently because of his -velocity, and he blinked and automatically turned his head aside, so -that he did not see the dark patch again before his descent put it -below the horizon.</p> - -<p>Even so near, no features, no natural formations appeared. There was -only a vast brightness below him. He could make no guess as to his -height nor—after he had slowed until the wind against his body was not -detectable through the space suit—of his speed with relation to the -ground. It was extraordinary. It occurred to him to drop something to -get some idea, even if a vague one, of his altitude above the ground.</p> - -<p>He did—an oil-soaked rag from the tool kit. It went fluttering down -and down, and abruptly vanished, relatively a short distance below him. -It had not landed. It had been blotted out.</p> - -<p>Tired as he was, it took him minutes to think of turning on the -suit-microphone which would enable him to hear sounds in this -extraordinary world. But when he flicked the switch he heard a dull, -droning, moaning noise which was unmistakable. Wind. Below him there -was a sandstorm. He was riding just above its upper surface. He could -not see the actual ground because there was an opaque wall of sand -between. There might be five hundred feet between him and solidity, or -five thousand, or there might be no actual solid, immovable ground at -all. In any case, he could not possibly land.</p> - -<p>He rose again and headed for the dark area he had noted. But a space -skid is not intended for use in atmosphere. Its power is great, to be -sure, when its power unit is filled. But Stan had come a very long way -indeed since his departure from the <i>Stallifer</i>. And his drive had -blown a fuse, once, which cost him some power.</p> - -<p>Unquestionably, the blown fuse had been caused by the impinging of -a Bowdoin-Hall field upon the skid. Some other space ship than the -<i>Stallifer</i>, using Khor Alpha as a course guide, had flashed past -the one-planet system at many hundred times the speed of light. The -pulsations of its drive field had struck the skid and drained its drive -of power, and unquestionably had registered the surge. But it was not -likely that it would be linked with Stan's disappearance. The other -ship might be headed for a star system light-centuries from Earth, and -a minute—relatively a minute—joggle of its meters would not be a -cause for comment. The real seriousness of the affair was that the skid -had drained power before its fuse blew.</p> - -<p>That property of a Bowdoin-Hall field, incidentally—its trick of -draining power from any drive unit in its range—is the reason that -hampers its use save in deep space. Liners have to be elaborately -equipped with fuses lest in shorting each other's drives they wreck -their own. In interplanetary work, fuses are not even practical because -they might be blown a hundred times in a single voyage. Within solar -systems high-frequency pulsations are used, so that no short can last -more than the hundred-thousandth of a second, in which time not even -allotropic graphite can be ruined.</p> - -<p>Stan, then, was desperately short of power and had to use it in a -gravitational field which was prodigally wasteful of it. He had to -rise high above the sandstorm before he saw the black area again -at the planet's very rim. He headed for it in the straightest of -straight lines. As he drove, the power-gauge needle flickered steadily -over toward zero. A meteor miner does not often use as much as one -earth-gravity acceleration, and Stan had to use that much merely to -stay aloft. The black area, too, was all of a hundred-odd miles away, -and after some millions of miles of space travel, the skid was hard put -to make it.</p> - -<p>He dived for the black thing as it drew near, and on his approach it -appeared simply impossible. It was a maze, a grid, of rectangular -girders upholding a seemingly infinite number of monstrous dead-black -slabs. There was a single layer of those slabs, supported by -innumerable spidery slender columns. Here, in the dawn belt, there was -no wind and Stan could see clearly. Sloping down, he saw that ten-foot -columns of some dark metal rose straight and uncompromising from a -floor of sand to a height of three hundred feet or more. At their top -were the grid and the slabs, forming a roof some thirty stories above -the ground. There were no under-floors, no cross-ways, no structural -features of any sort between the sand from which the columns rose and -that queer and discontinuous roof.</p> - -<p>Stan landed on the ground at the structure's edge. He could see streaks -and bars of sky between the slabs. He looked down utterly empty aisles -between the columns and saw nothing but the columns and the roof until -the shafts merged in the distance. There was utter stillness here. The -sand was untroubled and undisturbed. If the structure was a shelter, it -sheltered nothing. Yet it stretched for at least a hundred miles in at -least one direction, as he had seen from aloft. As nearly as he could -tell, there was no reason for its existence and no purpose it could -serve. Yet it was not the abandoned skeleton of something no longer -used. It was plainly in perfect repair.</p> - -<p>The streaks of sky to be seen between its sections were invariably -exact in size and alignment. They were absolutely uniform. There was no -dilapidation and no defect anywhere. The whole structure was certainly -artificial and certainly purposeful, and it implied enormous resources -of civilization. But there was no sign of its makers, and Stan could -not even guess at the reason for its construction.</p> - -<p>But he was too worn out to guess. On board the <i>Stallifer</i>, he'd been -so sick with rage that he could not rest. On the space skid, riding in -an enormous loneliness about a dwarf sun whose single planet had never -been examined by men, he had to be alert. He had to find the system's -one planet, and then he had to make a landing with practically no -instruments. When he landed at the base of the huge grid, he examined -his surroundings wearily, but with the cautious suspicion needful on -an unknown world. Then he made the sort of camp the situation seemed -to call for. He clamped the space skid and his supplies to his space -suit belt, lay down hard by one of the columns, and incontinently fell -asleep.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He was wakened by a horrific roaring in his earphones. He lay still -for one instant. When he tried to stir, it was only with enormous -difficulty that he could move his arms and legs. He felt as if he were -gripped by quicksand. Then, suddenly, he was wide awake. He fought -himself free of clinging incumbrances. He had been half buried in sand. -He was in the center of a roaring, swirling sand-devil which broke upon -the nearby column and built up mounds of sand and snatched them away -again, and flung great masses of it crazily in every direction.</p> - -<p>As the enigmatic structure had moved out of the dawn belt into the -morning, howling winds had risen. All the fury of a tornado, all the -stifling deadliness of a sandstorm, beat upon the base of the grid. And -from what Stan had seen when he first tried to land, this was evidently -the normal daily weather of this world. And if this was a sample of -merely morning winds, by midday existence would be impossible.</p> - -<p>Stan looked at the chrono. He had slept less than three hours. He made -a loop of line from the abandon-ship kit and got it about the nearest -pillar. He drew himself to that tall column. He tried to find a lee -side, but there was none. The wind direction changed continually. He -debated struggling farther under the shelter of the monstrous roof. He -stared up, estimatingly—</p> - -<p>He saw slabs tilt. In a giant section whose limits he could not -determine, he saw the rectangular sections of the roof revolve in -strict unison. From a position parallel to the ground, they turned -until the light of the sky shone down unhindered. Vast masses of sand -descended—deposited on the slabs by the wind, and now dumped down -about the columns' bases. And then wind struck anew with a concentrated -virulence, and the space between the columns became filled with a -whirling giant eddy that blotted out everything.</p> - -<p>It was a monster whirlwind that spun crazily in its place for minutes, -and then roared out to the open again. In its violence it picked Stan -up bodily, with the skid and abandon-ship kit still clamped to his -space suit. But for the rope about the column he would have been ripped -away and tossed insanely into the smother of sand that reached to the -horizon.</p> - -<p>After a long time, he managed to take up some of the slack of the rope; -to bind himself and his possessions more closely to the column which -rose into the smother overhead. Later still, he was able to take up -more. In an hour, he was bound tightly to the pillar and was no longer -flung to and fro by the wind. Then he dozed off again.</p> - -<p>It was uneasy slumber. It gave him little rest. Once a swirling -sand-devil gouged away the sand beneath him so that he and his gear -hung an unguessable distance above solidity, perhaps no more than a -yard or so, but perhaps much more. Later he woke to find the sand -piling up swiftly about him, so that he had to loosen his rope and -climb wearily as tons of fine, abrasive stuff—it would have been -strangling had he needed to breathe it direct—were flung upon him. But -he did sleep from time to time.</p> - -<p>Then night fell. The winds died down from hurricane intensity to no -more than gale force. Then to mere frantic gusts. And then—the sun -had set on the farther side of the huge structure to which he had tied -himself—then there was a period when a fine whitish mist seemed to -obscure all the stars, and it gradually faded, and he realized that it -was particles of so fine a dust that it hung in the air long after the -heavier stuff had settled.</p> - -<p>He released himself from the rope about the pillar. He stood, a tiny -figure, beside the gargantuan columns of black metal which rose toward -the stars. The stars themselves shone down brightly, brittlely, through -utterly clear air. There were no traces of cloud formation following -the storm of the day.</p> - -<p>It was obvious that this was actually the normal weather of this -planet. By day, horrific winds and hurricanes. By night, a vast -stillness. And the small size and indistinctness of the icecap he -had seen was assurance that there was nowhere on the planet any -sizeable body of water to moderate the weather. And with such storms, -inhabitants were unthinkable. Life of any sort was out of the question. -But if there was anything certain in the cosmos, it was that the -structure at whose feet he stood was artificial!</p> - -<p>He flicked on his suit-radio. Static only. Sand particles in dry air, -clashing against each other, would develop charges to produce just the -monstrous hissing sounds his earphones gave off. He flicked off the -radio and opened his face-plate. Cold dry air filled his lungs.</p> - -<p>There were no inhabitants. There could not be any. But there was this -colossal artifact of unguessable purpose. There was no life on this -planet, but early during today's storm—and he suspected at other times -when he could neither see nor hear—huge areas of the roof-plates had -turned together to dump down their accumulated loads of sand. As he -breathed in the first breaths of cold air, he heard a shrill outcry -and a roaring somewhere within the forest of pillars. At a guess, it -was another dumping of sand from the roof. It stopped. Another roaring, -somewhere else. Yet another. Section by section, area by area, the sand -that had piled on the roof at the top of the iron columns was dumped -down between the columns' bases.</p> - -<p>Stan flicked on the tiny instrument lights and looked at the motor of -the space skid. The needle was against the pin at zero. He considered, -and shrugged. Rob Torren would come presently to fight him to the -death. But it would take the <i>Stallifer</i> ten days or longer to reach -Earth, then three or four days for the microscopic examination of every -part of the vast ship in a grim search for him.</p> - -<p>Then there'd be an inquiry. It might last a week or two weeks or -longer. The findings would be given after deliberation which might -produce still another delay of a week or even a month.</p> - -<p>Rob Torren would not be free to leave Earth before then. And then it -would take him days to get hold of a space yacht and—because a yacht -would be slower than the <i>Stallifer</i>—two weeks or so to get back here. -Three months in all, perhaps. Stan's food wouldn't last that long. His -water supply wouldn't last nearly as long as that.</p> - -<p>If he could get up to the icecap there would be water, and on the -edge of the ice he could plant some of the painstakingly developed -artificial plants whose seeds were part of every abandon-ship kit. -They could live and produce food under almost any set of planetary -conditions. But he couldn't reach the polar cap without power the skid -didn't have.</p> - -<p>He straddled the little device. He pointed it upward. He rose -sluggishly. The absurd little vehicle wabbled crazily. Up, and up, and -up toward the uncaring stars. The high thin columns of steel seemed to -keep pace with him. The roof of this preposterous shed loomed slowly -nearer, but the power of the skid was almost gone. He was ten feet -below the crest when diminishing power no longer gave thrust enough to -rise. He would hover here for seconds, and then drift back down again -to the sand—for good.</p> - -<p>He flung his kit of food upward. It sailed over the sharp edge of the -roof and landed there. The skid was thrust down by the force of the -throw, but it had less weight to lift. It bounced upward, soared above -the roof, and just as its thrust dwindled again, Stan managed to land.</p> - -<p>He found—nothing.</p> - -<p>To be exact, he found the columns joined by massive girders of steel -fastening them in a colossal open grid. Upon those girders which ran -in a line due north and south—reckoning the place of sunset to be -west—huge flat plates of metal were slung, having bearings which -permitted them to be rotated at the will of whatever unthinkable -constructor had devised them.</p> - -<p>There were small bulges which might contain motors for the turning. -There was absolutely nothing but the framework and the plates and the -sand some three hundred feet below. There was no indication of the -purpose of the plates or the girders or the whole construction. There -was no sign of any person or creature using or operating the slabs. It -appeared that the grid was simply a monotonous, featureless, insanely -tedious construction which it would have taxed the resources of Earth -to build. It stretched far, far beyond the horizon—and did nothing and -had no purpose save to gather sand on its upper surface and from time -to time dump that sand down to the ground. It did not make sense.</p> - -<p>Stan had a more immediate problem than the purpose of the grid, though. -He was three hundred feet above ground. He was short of food and -hopelessly short of water. When day came again, this place would be -the center of a hurricane of blown sand. On the ground, lashed to a -metal column, he had been badly buffeted about even in his space suit. -Up here the wind would be much stronger. It was not likely that any -possible lashing would hold him against such a storm. He could probably -get back to the ground, of course, but there seemed no particular point -to it.</p> - -<p>As he debated, there came a thin, shrill whistling overhead. It came -from the far south, and passed overhead, descending, and—going down -in pitch—it died away to the northward. The lowering of its pitch -indicated that it was slowing. The sound was remarkably like that of a -small space craft entering atmosphere incompletely under control—which -was unthinkable, of course, on the solitary unnamed planet of Khor -Alpha. And Stan felt very, very lonely on a huge plate of iron thirty -stories above the ground, on an alien planet under unfriendly stars, -and with this cryptic engineering monstrosity breaking away to sheer -desert on one side and extending uncounted miles in all others. He -flicked on his suit-radio, without hope.</p> - -<p>There came the loud, hissing static. Then under and through it came the -humming carrier-wave of a yacht transmitter sending on emergency power.</p> - -<p>"Help call! Help call! Space yacht <i>Erebus</i> grounded on planet of Khor -Alpha, main drive burned out, landed in darkness, outside conditions -unknown. If anyone hears, p-please answer! M-my landing drive smashed -when I hit ground, too! Help call! Help call! Space yacht <i>Erebus</i> -grounded on planet of Khor Alpha, main drive burned out, landed in -darkness—"</p> - -<p>Stan Buckley had no power. He could not move from this spot. The -<i>Erebus</i> had grounded somewhere in the desert which covered all the -planet but this one structure. When dawn came, the sandstorm would -begin again. And with its main drive burned out, its landing drive -smashed—when the morrow's storms began it would be strange indeed if -the whirlwinds did not scoop away sand from about the one solid object -they'd encounter, so that the little craft would topple down and down -and ultimately be covered over, buried under maybe hundreds of feet of -smothering stuff.</p> - -<p>He knew the <i>Erebus</i>. Of course. It belonged to Esther Hume. The voice -from it was Esther's—the girl he was to have married, if Rob Torren -hadn't made charges disgracing him utterly. And tomorrow she would be -buried alive in the helpless little yacht, while he was unable to lift -a finger to her aid.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He was talking to her desperately when there was a vast, labored tumult -to the west. It was the product of ten thousand creakings. He turned, -and in the starlight he saw great flat plates—they were fifty feet by -a hundred and more—turning slowly. An area a mile square changed its -appearance. Each of the flat plates in a hundred rows of fifty plates -turned sidewise, to dump its load of settled sand. A square mile of -plates turned edges to the sky—and turned back again. Creakings and -groanings filled the air, together with the soft roaring noise of -the falling sand. A pause. Another great section of a mile each way -performed the same senseless motion. Pure desperation made Stan say -sharply:</p> - -<p>"Esther! Cut off for half an hour! I'll call back! I see the slimmest -possible chance, and I've got to take it! Half an hour, understand?"</p> - -<p>He heard her unsteady assent. He scrambled fiercely to the nearest of -the huge plates. It was, of course, insane to think of such a thing. -The plates had no purpose save to gather loads of sand and then to turn -and dump them. But there were swellings at one end of each—where the -girders to which they clung united to form this preposterous elevated -grid. Those swellings might be motors. He dragged a small cutting-torch -from the tool kit. He snapped its end. A tiny, savage, blue-white flame -appeared in midair half an inch from the torch's metal tip.</p> - -<p>He turned that flame upon the rounded swelling at the end of a monster -slab. Something made the slabs turn. By reason, it should be a motor. -The swellings might be housings for motors. He made a cut across such a -swelling. At the first touch of the flame something smoked luridly and -frizzled before the metal grew white-hot and flowed aside before the -flame. There had been a coating on the iron.</p> - -<p>Even as he cut, Stan realized that the columns and the plates were -merely iron. But the sand blast of the daily storms should erode the -thickest of iron away in a matter of weeks, at most. So the grid was -coated with a tough, elastic stuff—a plastic of some sort—which was -not abraded by the wind. It did not scratch because it was not hard. It -yielded, and bounced sand particles away instead of resisting them. It -would outwear iron, in the daily sand blast, by a million times, on the -principle by which land vehicles on Earth use rubber tires instead of -metal, for greater wear.</p> - -<p>He cut away a flap of metal from the swelling. He tossed it away with -his space-gloved hands. His suit-flash illuminated the hollow within. -There was a motor inside, and it was remarkably familiar, though not a -motor such as men made for the purpose of turning things. There was a -shaft. There were four slabs of something that looked like graphite, -rounded to fit the shaft. That was all. No coils. No armature. No sign -of magnets.</p> - -<p>Men used this same principle, but for a vastly different purpose. Men -used the reactive thrust of allotropic graphite against an electric -current in their space ships. The Bowdoin-Hall field made such a thrust -incredibly efficient, and it was such graphite slabs that drove the -<i>Stallifer</i>—though these were monsters weighing a quarter of a ton -apiece, impossible for the skid to lift. Insulated cables led to the -slabs in wholly familiar fashion. The four cables joined to two and -vanished in the seemingly solid girders which formed all the giant grid.</p> - -<p>Almost without hope, Stan slashed through two cables with his torch. He -dragged out the recharging cable of the skid. He clipped the two ends -to the two cut cables. They sparked! Then he stared. The meter of the -skid showed current flowing into its power bank. An amazing amount of -current. In minutes, the power-storage needle stirred from its pin. In -a quarter of an hour it showed half-charge. Then a creaking began all -around.</p> - -<p>Stan leaped back to one of the cross-girders just as all the plates -in an area a mile square about him began to turn—all but the one -whose motor-housing he had cut through. All the other plates turned -so that their edges pointed to the stars. The sand piled on them by -the day storm poured down into the abyss beneath. Only the plate whose -motor-housing Stan had cut remained unmoving. Sparks suddenly spat -in the metal hollow, as if greater voltage had been applied to stir -the unmoving slab. A flaring, lurid, blue-white arc burned inside the -housing. Then it cut off.</p> - -<p>All the gigantic plates which had turned their edges skyward went -creaking loudly back to their normal position, their flat sides turned -to the stars. And nothing more happened. Nothing at all.</p> - -<p>In another ten minutes, the skid's meter showed that the power bank -was fully charged. And Stan, with plenty to think about, straddled the -little object and went soaring to northward like a witch on a broom, -sending a call on his suit-radio before him.</p> - -<p>"Coming, Esther! Give me a directional and let's make it fast! We've -got a lot to do before daylight!"</p> - -<p>He had traveled probably fifty miles before her signal came in. Then -there was a frantically anxious time until he found the little, -helpless space yacht, tumbled on the desert sand, with Esther peering -hopefully out of the air-lock as he swooped down to a clumsy landing. -She was warned and ready. There was no hope of repairing the drive. A -burned-out drive to operate in a Bowdoin-Hall field calls for bars of -allotropic graphite—graphite in a peculiar energy state as different -from ordinary graphite as carbon diamond is from carbon coal. There -were probably monster bars of just such stuff in the giant grid's -motors, but the skid could not handle them. For tonight, certainly, -repair was out of the question. Esther had hooked up a tiny, low-power -signaling device which gave out a chirping wave every five seconds. She -wore a space suit, had two abandon-ship kits, and all the water that -could be carried.</p> - -<p>The skid took off again. It was not designed to work in a planet's -gravitational field. It used too much power, and it wabbled -erratically, and for sheer safety Stan climbed high. With closed -faceplates the space-suited figures seemed to soar amid the stars. They -could speak only by radio, close together as they were.</p> - -<p>"Wh-where are we going, Stan?"</p> - -<p>"Icecap," said Stan briefly. "North Pole. There's water there—or -hoarfrost, anyhow. And the day storms won't be so bad if there are -storms at all. In the tropics on this planet the normal weather is a -typhoon-driven sandstorm. We'll settle down in the polar area and wait -for Rob Torren to come for us. It may be three months or more."</p> - -<p>"Rob Torren—"</p> - -<p>"He helped me escape," said Stan briefly. "Tell you later. Watch ahead."</p> - -<p>He'd had no time for emotional thinking since his landing, and -particularly since the landing of the little space yacht now sealed -up and abandoned to be buried under the desert sand. But he knew how -Esther came to be here. She'd told him, by radio, first off. She'd -had news of the charges Rob Torren had brought against him. She -hadn't believed them. Not knowing of his embarcation for Earth for -court-martial—the logical thing would have been a trial at advanced -base—she'd set out desperately to assure him of her faith.</p> - -<p>She couldn't get a liner direct, so she'd set out alone in her little -space yacht. In a sense, it should have been safe enough. Craft -equipped with Bowdoin-Hall drive were all quite capable of interstellar -flight. Power was certainly no problem any more, and with extra -capacitors to permit of low-frequency pulsations of the drive field, -and mapped dwarf white stars as course markers, navigation should be -simple enough. The journey, as such, was possibly rash but it was -not foolhardy. Only—she hadn't fused her drive when she changed its -pulsation-frequency. And when she was driving past Khor Alpha, her -Bowdoin-Hall field had struck the space skid on which Stan was trying -to make this planet, and the field had drained his power.</p> - -<p>The short circuit blew the skid's fuse, but it burned out the yacht's -more delicate drive. Specifically, it overloaded and ruined the -allotropic carbon blocks which made the drive work. So Esther's -predicament was caused not only by her solicitude for Stan, but by the -drive of the skid on which he'd escaped from the <i>Stallifer</i>.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He blamed himself. Bitterly. But even more he blamed Rob Torren. Hatred -surged up in him again for the man who had promised to come here and -fight him to the death. But he said quietly:</p> - -<p>"Rob's coming here after me. We'll talk about that later. He didn't -guess this place would be without water and with daily hurricanes -everywhere except—I hope!—the poles. He thought I'd be able to make -out until he could come back. We've got to! Watch out ahead for the -sunset line. We've got to follow it north until we hit the polar cap. -With water and our kits we should be able to survive indefinitely."</p> - -<p>The space-suited figures were close together—in fact, in contact. But -there was no feeling of touching each other through the insulating, -almost inflexible armor of their suits. And sealed as they were in -their helmets and communicating only by phone in the high stratosphere, -neither could feel the situation suitable for romance. Esther was -silent for a time. Then she said:</p> - -<p>"You told me you were out of power—"</p> - -<p>"I was," he told her. "I got some from the local inhabitants—if -they're local."</p> - -<p>"What—"</p> - -<p>He described the preposterous, meaningless structure on the desert. -Thousands of square miles in extent. Cryptic and senseless and of -unimaginable significance.</p> - -<p>"Every slab has a motor to turn it. I cut into a housing and there was -power there. I loaded up with it. I can't figure the thing out. There's -nowhere that a civilized or any other race could live. There's nothing -those slabs could be for!"</p> - -<p>There was a thin line of sunlight far ahead. Traveling north, they -drove through the night and overtook the day. They were very high -indeed, now, beyond atmosphere and riding the absurd small skid that -meteor miners use. They saw the dwarf white sun, Khor Alpha. Its rays -were very fierce. They passed over the dividing line between day and -night, and far, far ahead they saw the hazy whitishness which was the -polar cap of this planet.</p> - -<p>It was half an hour before they landed, and when they touched ground -they came simply to a place where wind-blown sand ceased to be powdery -and loose, and where there was plainly dampness underneath. The sun -hung low indeed on the horizon. On the shadow side of sand hillocks -there was hoarfrost. All the moisture of the planet was deposited in -the sand at its poles, and during the long winter nights the sand was -frozen so that even during the summer season unthinkable frigidity -crept out into every shadow.</p> - -<p>Stan nodded at a patch of frost on the darker site of a half-mile sand -dune.</p> - -<p>"Sleeping," he said dryly, "will be done in space suits. This ground -will be cold where the sun doesn't hit! Do you notice that there's no -sign of anything growing anywhere? Not even moss?"</p> - -<p>"It's too cold?"</p> - -<p>"Hardly!" said Stan. "Mosses and lichens grow on Earth as far north as -the ground ever thaws. And on every other planet I've ever visited. -There'd be plants here if anywhere, because there's water here. There -simply can't be any life on this planet. None at all!"</p> - -<p>Then the absurdity of the statement struck him. There was that -monstrous grid, made by intelligence of some sort and using vast -resources. But—</p> - -<p>"Dammit!" said Stan. "How can there be life here? How can plants live -in perpetual sandstorms? How can animals live without plants to break -down minerals and make them into food? How can either plants or animals -live without water? If there were life anywhere, it would have to be -near water, which means here. And if there's none here there can't be -any at all—"</p> - -<p>They reached the top of the dune. Esther caught her breath. She pointed.</p> - -<p>There, reaching across the dampened sand, was a monstrous and a -horrifying trail. Something had come from the zones where the -sandstorms raged. It had passed this way, moving in one direction, and -it had passed again, going back toward the stormy wastes. By the trail, -it had ten or twelve or twenty legs, like some unthinkable centipede. -The tracks of its separate sets of legs were separated by fifteen feet. -And each footprint was two yards across.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>For three days by the chrono on the space skid, the hard white sun Khor -Alpha circled the horizon without once setting. Which was natural, -because this was one of the poles of Khor Alpha's only planet, and this -was summer. In those three days Stan and Esther saw no living thing. No -bird, beast, or insect; no plant, moss, or lichen. They had planted -the seeds from their abandon-ship kits—included in such kits because -space castaways may have to expect to be isolated not for weeks or -months, but perhaps for all their lives.</p> - -<p>The weeds would produce artificially developed plants with amazing -powers of survival and adaptation and food production. On the fourth -day—clock time—the first of the plants appeared above the bank of -damp sand in which they had been placed. In seven days more there would -be food from them. If one plant of the lot was allowed to drop its own -seeds, in time there would be a small jungle of food plants on which -they could live.</p> - -<p>For the rest, they lived in a fashion lower than any savages of Earth. -They had no shelter. There was no building material but sand. They -slept in their space suits for warmth. They had no occupation save that -of waiting for the plants to bear food, and after that of waiting for -Rob Torren to come.</p> - -<p>And when he came—the presence of Esther changed everything. When -Torren arrived to fight a duel to the death with Stan, the stake was -to have been ultimately Esther's hand. But if she were present, if she -knew the true story of Torren's charges against Stan and their falsity, -he could have no hope of winning her by Stan's death. He would have -nothing to gain by a duel. But he would gain by the murder of one or -both of them. Safety from the remotest chance of later exposure, at any -rate, and revenge for the failure of his hopes. And if he managed to -kill Stan by any means, fair or foul, Esther would be left wholly at -his mercy.</p> - -<p>So Stan brooded, hating Rob Torren with a desperate intensity -surpassing even the hatred he'd felt on the <i>Stallifer</i>. A large part -of his hatred was due to helplessness. There was no way to fight back. -But he tried desperately to think of one.</p> - -<p>On the fourth day he said abruptly, "Let's take a trip, Esther."</p> - -<p>She looked at him in mute inquiry.</p> - -<p>"For power," he said "and maybe something more. We might be able to -find out something. If there are inhabitants on this planet, for -instance. There can't be, but there's that beast—</p> - -<p>"Maybe it's somehow connected with whatever or whoever built that -grid—that checkerboard arrangement I told you about. Something or -somebody built that, but I can't believe anything can live in those -sandstorms."</p> - -<p>They'd followed the huge trail that had been visible on their first -landing in the polar regions. The great, two-yard-across pads of the -monster had made a clear trail for ten miles from the point of their -discovery. At the end of the trail there was a great gap in a cliff of -frozen sand. The Thing seemed to have devoured tons of ice-impacted -stuff. Then it had gone back into the swirling sandy wastes. It -carried away with it cubic yards—perhaps twenty or thirty tons—of -water-filled frozen sand.</p> - -<p>But reason insisted that there could be no animal life on a planet -without plants, and no plants on a desert which was the scene of -daily typhoons, hourly hurricanes, and with no water anywhere upon it -save at the poles. And there was no vegetation there. A monster with -dozens of six-foot feet, and able to consume tons of wetted sand for -moisture, would need vast quantities of food for energy alone. And it -was unthinkable that food was to be found in the strangling depths of -perpetual sandstorms.</p> - -<p>"There's another thing," Stan added. "With power to spare I could fuse -sand into something like a solid. Make a house, maybe, and chairs to -sit on, instead of having to wear our space suits all the time. Maybe -we could even heat the inside of a house!"</p> - -<p>Esther smiled at him.</p> - -<p>"Darling," she said wryly, "you've no idea how glad I'd be of a solid -floor to walk on instead of sand, and a chair to sit on, even if we -didn't have a roof!"</p> - -<p>They had been, in effect, in the position of earth-castaways marooned -on a sand-cay which had not even seashells on it or fish around it. -There was literally nothing they could do but talk.</p> - -<p>"And," she added, "if we could make a tub to take a bath in—"</p> - -<p>She brightened at the thought. Stan hadn't told her of his own reasons -for having no hope. There was no point in causing her despair in -advance.</p> - -<p>"We'll see what we see," he said. "Climb aboard."</p> - -<p>The space skid was barely five feet long. It had a steering bar and a -thick body which contained its power-storage unit and drive. And there -was the seat which one straddled, and the strap to hold its passenger. -Two people riding it in bulky space suits was much like riding double -on a bicycle, but Stan would not leave Esther alone. Not since they'd -seen that horrifying trail!</p> - -<p>They rose vertically and headed south in what was almost a rocket's -trajectory. Stan, quite automatically, had noted the time of sunrise at -the incredible structure beside which he'd landed. Later, he'd noted as -automatically the length of the planet's day. So to find his original -landing place he had only to follow the dawn line across the planet's -surface, with due regard for the time consumed in traveling.</p> - -<p>They were still two hundred miles out in space when he sighted the -grid. He slanted down to it. It was just emerging from the deep black -shadow of night. He swooped to a landing on one of the hundred-foot -slabs of hinged metal three hundred feet above ground. It was clear of -sand. It had obviously been dumped.</p> - -<p>Esther stared about her, amazed.</p> - -<p>"But—people made this, Stan!" she insisted. "If we can get in touch -with them—"</p> - -<p>"You sit over there," said Stan. He pointed to an intersection of the -criss-crossing girders. "It takes power to travel near a planet. My -power bank is half drained already. I'd better fill it up again."</p> - -<p>He got out his cutting-torch. He turned it upon a motor-housing. The -plastic coating frizzled and smoked. It peeled away. Metal flared -white-hot and melted.</p> - -<p>There was a monstrous creaking. All the plates in a square mile turned. -Swiftly. Only a desperate leap saved Stan from a drop to the desert -thirty stories below.</p> - -<p>The great slabs pointed their edges to the sky. Stan waited. Esther -said startledly;</p> - -<p>"That was on purpose, Stan!"</p> - -<p>"Hardly," said Stan. "They'll turn back in a minute."</p> - -<p>But they did not turn back. They stayed tilted toward the dawning sky.</p> - -<p>"You may be right, at that," said Stan. "We'll see. Try another place."</p> - -<p>Five minutes later they landed on a second huge slab of black metal, -miles away. Without a word, Stan ensconced Esther on the small platform -formed by crossing girders. He took out the torch again. The tiny, -blue-white flame. Smoke at its first touch. Metal flowed.</p> - -<p>With a vast cachinnation of squeakings, a mile-square section shifted -like the first....</p> - -<p>"Something," said Stan grimly, "doesn't want us to have power. Maybe -they can stop us, and maybe not."</p> - -<p>The swelling which was the motor-housing was just within reach from -the immovable girder crossing on which Esther waited. Stan reached -out now. The torch burned with a quiet fierce flame. A great section -of metal fell away, exposing a motor exactly like the one he'd first -examined—slabs of allotropic graphite and all. He thrust in and cut -the cables. He reached in with the charging clips—</p> - -<p>There was a crackling report in the space skid's body. Smoke came out.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Stan examined the damage with grimly set features.</p> - -<p>"Blew another fuse," he told Esther. "We're licked. When I took power -the first time, I ruined a motor. It's been found out. So the plates -turned, today, to—scare me away, perhaps, as soon as I cut into -another. When I didn't scare and severed the cables, high-voltage -current was shot into them to kill me or ruin whatever I was using the -power for. Whether there's life here or not, there's intelligence—and -a very unpleasant kind, too!"</p> - -<p>He re-fused the skid, scowling.</p> - -<p>"No attempt to communicate with us!" he said savagely. "They'd know -somebody civilized cut into that motor-housing! They'd know it was an -emergency! You'd think—"</p> - -<p>He stopped. A faint, faint humming sound became audible. It seemed to -come from nowhere in particular—or from everywhere. But it was not the -formless humming of a rising wind. This sound was a humming punctuated -by hurried, rhythmic clankings. It was oddly like the sound of cars -traveling over an old-fashioned railway—one with unwelded rail joints. -Then Esther jerked her head about.</p> - -<p>"Stan! Look there!"</p> - -<p>Something hurtled toward them in the gray dawn light. It was a machine. -Even in the first instant of amazement, Stan could see what it was -and what it was designed to do. It was a huge, bulbous platform above -stiltlike legs. At the bottoms of the legs were wheels. The wheels -ran on the cross-girders as on a railroad track, and the body of the -thing was upraised enough to ride well above the sidewise-tilted slabs. -There were other wheels to be lowered for travel on the girders which -supported the slabs.</p> - -<p>It was not a flying device, but a rolling one. It could travel in -either of two directions at right angles to each other, and had been -designed to run only on the great grid which ran beyond the horizon. -It was undoubtedly a maintaining machine, designed to reach any spot -where trouble developed, for the making of repairs, and it was of such -weight that even the typhoonlike winds of a normal day on this world -could not lift it from its place.</p> - -<p>It came hurtling toward them at terrific speed. It would roll -irresistibly over anything on the girders which were its tracks.</p> - -<p>"Get on!" snapped Stan. "Quick!"</p> - -<p>Esther moved as swiftly as she could, but space suits are clumsy -things. The little skid shot skyward only part of a second before the -colossus ran furiously over the place where they had been. A hundred -feet beyond, it braked and came to a seemingly enraged stop. It stood -still as if watching the hovering, tiny skid with its two passengers.</p> - -<p>"It looks disappointed," said Stan dourly. "I wonder if it wants to -chase us?"</p> - -<p>He sent the skid darting away. They landed. In seconds the vibration -caused by the huge machine's motion began and grew loud. They saw it -race into view. As it appeared, instantly a deafening clamor began. -Slabs in all directions rose to their vertical position, so that the -two humans could not dodge from one row of girders to another. And then -with a roar and a rush the thing plunged toward them once more.</p> - -<p>Again the skid took off. Again the huge machine overran the spot where -they had been, then stopped short as if baffled. Stan sent his odd -craft off at an angle. Instantly the gigantic thing was in motion, -moving in lightning speed in one direction, stopping short to move on a -new course at right angles to the first, and so progressing in zigzag -but very swift pursuit.</p> - -<p>"'Won't you land so I can crush you?' said the monster to us two," said -Stan dryly. "They won't let us have any more power, and we haven't any -more to waste. But still—"</p> - -<p>He listened to his suit-radio, twisting the tuning dials as he sent the -skid up in a spiral.</p> - -<p>"I'm wondering," he observed, "if they're trying to tell us something -by radio. And meanwhile I'd like a more comprehensive view of this -damned checkerboard!"</p> - -<p>A faint, faint, wavering whine came into the headphones.</p> - -<p>"There's something," he commented "Not a main communication wave, -though. A stray harmonic—and of a power beam, I think. They must use -plenty short waves!"</p> - -<p>But he was searching the deadly monotony of the grid below him as he -spoke. Suddenly, he pointed. All the area below them to the horizon -was filled with geometric shapes of grids and squares. But one space -was different from the rest. Four squares were thrown into one, there. -And as the skid dived for a nearer view, that one square was seen to be -a deep, hollow shaft going down toward the very vitals of this world. -As Stan looked, though, it filled swiftly with something rising from -its depths. The lifting thing was a platform, and things moved about on -it.</p> - -<p>"That's that!" said Stan hardly.</p> - -<p>He shot the skid away in level flight at topmost speed, with the great -rolling machine following helplessly and ragingly on its zigzag course -below.</p> - -<p>The horizon was dark, now, with the coming night. As Stan lifted -for the rocketlike trajectory that would take him back to the polar -regions, the white sun sank fiercely. There was a narrow space on which -the rays smote so slantingly that the least inequality of level was -marked by shadow. Gigantic sand dunes were outlined there. But beyond, -where the winds began, there was only featureless swirling dust.</p> - -<p>Stan was very silent all the way back. Only, once, he said calmly, "Our -power units will soak up a pretty big charge in a short time. We packed -away some power before the fuse blew."</p> - -<p>There was no comment for Esther to make. There was life on the planet. -It was life which knew of their existence and presence—and had tried -to kill them for the theft of some few megawatts of power. It would not -be easy to make terms with the life which held other life so cheaply.</p> - -<p>With the planet's only source of power now guarded, matters looked less -bright than before. But after they had reached the icecap, and when -they slanted down out of the airlessness to the spot which was their -home because their seeds had been planted there—as they dived down for -a landing, their real situation appeared.</p> - -<p>There was a colossal object with many pairs of legs moving back and -forth over the little space where their food plants sprouted. In days, -those plants would have yielded food. They wouldn't yield food now.</p> - -<p>Their garden was being trampled to nothingness by a multilegged machine -of a size comparable to the other machine which had chased them on -the grid. It was fifty feet high from ground to top, and had a round, -tanklike body all of twenty feet in diameter. Round projections at -one end looked like eyes. It moved on multiple legs which trampled in -orderly confusion. It stamped the growing plants to pulped green stuff -in the polar sand. It went over and over and over the place where -the food necessary for the humans' survival had promised to grow. It -stamped and stamped: It destroyed all hope of food. And it destroyed -all hope.</p> - -<p>Because, as Stan drove the skid down to see the machine more clearly, -it stopped in its stamping. It swung about to face him, with a -curiously unmachinelike ferocity. As Stan veered, it turned also. When -he sped on over it and beyond, it wheeled and came galloping with -surprising speed after him.</p> - -<p>Then they saw another machine. Two more. Three. They saw dark specks -here and there in the polar wastes, every one a machine like the one -which had tramped their food supply out of existence. And every one -changed course to parallel and approach the skid's line of travel. If -they landed, the machines would close in.</p> - -<p>There was only so much power. The skid could not stay indefinitely -aloft. And anywhere that they landed—</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>But they did land. They had to. It was a thousand miles away, on the -dark side of the planet, in a waste of sand which looked frozen in the -starlight. The instant the skid touched ground, Stan made a warning -gesture and reached over to turn off Esther's suit-radio. He opened his -own face-plate and almost gasped at the chill of the midnight air. With -no clouds or water vapor to hinder it, the heat stored up by day was -radiated out to the awful chill of interstellar space at a rate which -brought below zero temperatures within hours of sundown. At the winter -pole of the planet, the air itself must come close to turning liquid -from the cold. But here, and now, Stan nodded in his helmet as Esther -opened her face-plate.</p> - -<p>"No radio," he told her. "They'll hardly be able to find us in several -million square miles if we don't use radio. But now you get some sleep. -We're going to have a busy time, presently!"</p> - -<p>Esther hesitated, and said desperately, "But—who are they? What are -they? Why do they want to kill us?"</p> - -<p>"They're the local citizens," said Stan. "I was wrong, there are -inhabitants. I've no more idea what they may be like than you have. -But I suspect they want to kill us simply because we're strangers."</p> - -<p>"But how could an intelligent race develop on a planet like this?" -demanded Esther unbelievingly. "How'd they stay alive while they were -developing?"</p> - -<p>Stan shrugged his shoulders.</p> - -<p>"Once you admit that a thing is so," he said dryly, "you can figure out -how it happened. This sun is a dwarf white star. That means that once -upon a time it exploded. It flared out into a nova. Maybe there were -other planets nearer to it than this, and they volatilized when their -sun blew up. Everything on this planet, certainly, was killed, and for -a long, long time after it was surely uninhabitable by any standard. -There's a dwarf star in the Crab Nebula which will melt iron four -light-hours away—land that was a nova twelve hundred years ago. It -must have been bad on this planet for a long time indeed.</p> - -<p>"I'm guessing that when the first explosion came the inner planets -turned to gas and this one had all its seas and forests and all its -atmosphere simply blasted away to nothingness. Everything living on its -surface was killed. Even bacteria in the soil turned to steam and went -off into space. That would account for the absolute absence of life -here now."</p> - -<p>"But—" said Esther.</p> - -<p>"But," said Stan, "the people—call them people—who lived here -were civilized even then. They knew what was coming. If they hadn't -interstellar drive, flight would do them no good. They'd have nowhere -to go. So maybe they stayed. Underground. Maybe they dug themselves -caves and galleries five—ten—twenty miles down. Maybe some of those -galleries collapsed when the blow-up came, but some of the people -survived. They'd stayed underground for centuries. They'd have to! It -might be fifty thousand years they stayed underground, while Khor Alpha -blazed less and less fiercely, and they waited until they could come up -again.</p> - -<p>"There was no air for a while up here. They had to fight to keep alive, -down in the planet's vitals. They made a new civilization, surrounded -by rock, with no more thought of stars. They'd be hard put to it for -power, too. They couldn't well use combustion, with a limited air -supply. They probably learned to transform heat to power direct. You -can take power—electricity—and make heat. Why not the other way -about? For maybe fifty thousand years, and maybe more, they had to -live without even thinking of the surface of their world. But as the -dwarf star cooled off, they needed its heat again."</p> - -<p>He stopped. He seemed to listen intently. But there was no sound in the -icy night. There were only bright, unwinking stars and an infinity of -sand—and cold.</p> - -<p>"So they dug up to the surface again," he went on. "Air had come back, -molecule by molecule from empty space, drawn by the same gravitation -that once had kept it from flying away. And the fused-solid rock of -the surface, baked by day and frozen by night, had cracked and broken -down to powder. When air came again and winds blew, it was sand. The -whole planet was desert. The people couldn't live on the surface again. -They probably didn't want to. But they needed power. So they built that -monster grid they're so jealous of."</p> - -<p>"You mean," Esther demanded incredulously, "that's a generator?"</p> - -<p>"A transformer," corrected Stan. "Solar heat to electricity. Back on -Earth the sun pours better than a kilowatt of energy on every square -yard of Earth's surface in the tropics—over three million kilowatts to -the square mile. This checkerboard arrangement is at least a hundred -and fifty by two hundred miles. The power's greater here, but, on -Earth, that would mean ninety thousand million kilowatts. More than a -hundred thousand million horsepower—more than the whole Earth uses -even now!</p> - -<p>"If those big slabs convert solar radiation into power—and I charged -up the skid from one of them—there's a reason for the checkerboard, -and there's a reason for dumping the sand—it would hinder gathering -power—and there's a reason for getting upset when somebody started to -meddle with it. And they're upset! They'll have the conservation of -moisture down to a fine point, down below, but they made those leggy -machines to haul more water, from the poles. When they set them all to -hunting us, they're very much disturbed! But luckily they'd never have -worked out anything to fly with underground and they're not likely to -have done so since—considering the storms and all."</p> - -<p>There was a short silence. Then Esther said slowly, "It's—very -plausible, Stan. I believe it. And they'd have no idea of space travel, -so they'd have no idea of other intelligent races, and actually they'd -never think of castaways. They wouldn't understand, and they'd try -to kill us to study the problem we presented. That's their idea, no -doubt. And they've all the resources of a civilization that's old and -scientific. They'll apply them all to get us—and they won't even think -of listening to us! Stan! What can we do?"</p> - -<p>Stan said amusedly, there in the still, frigid night of an unnamed -planet, "Why—we'll do plenty! We're barbarians by comparison with -them, Esther, and barbarians have equipment civilized men forget. All -savages have spears, but a civilized man doesn't even always carry a -pocketknife. If we can find the <i>Erebus</i>, we can probably defy this -whole planet—until they put their minds to developing weapons. But -right now you go to sleep. I'll watch."</p> - -<p>Esther looked at him dubiously. Five days of sandstorms should have -buried the little yacht irrecoverably.</p> - -<p>"If it's findable," she said. Then she added wistfully, "But it would -be nice to be on the <i>Erebus</i> again. It would feel so good to walk -around without a space suit! And—" she added firmly, "after all, Stan, -we are engaged! And if you think I like trying to figure out some way -of getting kissed through an opened face-plate—"</p> - -<p>Stan said gruffly, "Go to sleep!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He paced up and down and up and down. They were remarkably unlike -castaways in the space tale magazines. In those works of fiction, the -hero is always remarkably ingenious. He contrives shelters from native -growths on however alien a planet he and the heroine may have been -marooned; he is full of useful odd bits of information which enable -him to surprise her with unexpected luxuries, and he is inspired when -it comes to signaling devices. But in five days on this planet, Stan -had been able to make no use of any natural growth because there -weren't any. He'd found no small luxuries for Esther because there was -literally nothing about but sand. And there was strikingly little use -in a fund of odd bits of information when there was only desert to -apply it to—desert and sandstorms.</p> - -<p>What he'd just told Esther was a guess; the best guess he could make, -and a plausible one, but still a guess. The only new bit of information -he'd picked up so far was the way the local inhabitants made electric -motors. And he had to bet his and Esther's life on that!</p> - -<p>He watched the chrono. And a good half hour before night would strike -the checkerboard grid, he was verifying what few preparations he could -make. A little later he waked Esther. And just about twenty minutes -before the sunset line would reach the grid, they soared upward to -seek it. If Stan's plan didn't work, they'd die. He was going to -gamble their lives and the last morsel of power the skid's power unit -contained, on information gained in two peeps at slab-motors on the -grid, and the inference that all motors on this planet would be made -on the same principle. Of course, as a subsidiary gamble, he had also -to bet that he in an unarmed and wrecked space yacht could defy a -civilization that had lived since before Khor Alpha was a dwarf star.</p> - -<p>They soared out of atmosphere on a trajectory that saved power but was -weirdly unlike any normal way of traveling from one spot on a planet's -surface to another. Beneath them lay the vast expanse of the desert, -all dense, velvety black except for one blindingly bright area at its -western rim. That bright area widened as they neared it, overtaking the -day. Suddenly the rectangular edges of the grid shed appeared, breaking -the sharp edge of dusk.</p> - -<p>The <i>Erebus</i> had grounded about fifty miles northward from the planet's -solitary structure. Stan turned on his suit-radio and listened -intently. There was no possible landmark. The dunes changed hourly -during the day and on no two days were ever the same. He skimmed the -settling sand clouds of the dusk belt. Presently he was sure he had -overshot his mark.</p> - -<p>He circled. He circled again. He made a great logarithmic spiral out -from the point he considered most likely. The power meter showed the -drain. He searched in the night, with no possible landmark. Sweat came -out on his face.</p> - -<p>Then he heard a tiny click. Sweat ran down his face. He worked -desperately to localize the signal Esther had set to working in the -yacht before she left it. When at last he landed and was sure the -<i>Erebus</i> was under the starlit sand about him, he looked at the power -gauge and tensed his lips. He pressed his space helmet close to -Esther's, until it touched. He spoke, and his voice carried by metallic -conduction without the use of radio.</p> - -<p>"We might make it if we try now. But we're going to need a lot of power -at best. I'm going to gamble the local yokels can't trace a skid drive -and wait for morning, to harness the whirlwinds to do our digging for -us."</p> - -<p>Her voice came faintly back to him by the same means of communication.</p> - -<p>"All right, Stan."</p> - -<p>She couldn't guess his intentions, of course. They were probably -insane. He said urgently:</p> - -<p>"Listen! The yacht's buried directly under us. Maybe ten feet, maybe -fifty, maybe Heaven knows how deep! There's a bare chance that if we -get to it we can do something, with what I know now about the machines -in use here. It's the only chance I know, and it's not a good one. It's -only fair to tell you—"</p> - -<p>"I'll try anything," said her voice in his helmet, "with you."</p> - -<p>He swallowed. Then he stayed awake and desperately alert, his -suit-microphones at their highest pitch of sensitivity, during the long -and deadly monotonous hours of the night.</p> - -<p>There was no alarm. When the sky grayed to the eastward, he showed her -how he hoped to reach the yacht. The drive of the skid, of course, -was not a pulsatory field such as even the smallest of space yachts -used. It was more nearly an adaptation of a meteor-repeller beam, a -simple reactive thrust against an artificial-mass field. It was the -first type of drive ever to lift a ship from Earth. For take-off and -landing and purposes like meteor mining it is still better than the -pulsating-field drive by which a ship travels in huge if unfelt leaps. -But in atmosphere it does produce a tremendous black-blast of repelled -air. It is never used on atmosphere-flyers for that very reason, but -Stan proposed to make capital of its drawback for his purpose.</p> - -<p>When he'd finished his explanation, Esther was more than a little pale, -but she smiled gamely.</p> - -<p>"All right, Stan. Go ahead!"</p> - -<p>"We'll save power if we wait for the winds," he told her.</p> - -<p>Already, though, breezes stirred across the dawn-lit sand. Already they -were hot breezes. Already the fine, impalpable sand dust which settled -last at nightfall was rising in curious opaque clouds which billowed -and curled and blotted out the horizon. But the grid was hidden by the -bulge of the planet's surface.</p> - -<p>Stan pointed the little skid downward in a hollow he scooped out with -his space-gloved hands. He set the gyros running to keep it pointed -toward the buried yacht. He had Esther climb up behind him. He lashed -the two of them together, and strapped them to the skid. And he waited.</p> - -<p>In ten minutes after the first sand grains pelted on his armor, the sky -was hidden by the finer dust. In twenty there were great gusts which -could be felt even within the space suits. In half an hour a monster -gale blew.</p> - -<p>Stan turned on the space skid's drive. It thrust downward toward the -sand and the buried yacht. It thrust upward against the air and pelting -sand.</p> - -<p>In three-quarters of an hour the sandstorm had reached frenzied -violence—but the skid pushed down from within a little hollow. Its -drive thrust up a spout of air. That spout drew sand grains with it. -But it was needful to increase the power. After an hour a gigantic -whirlwind swept around them. It tore at the two people and the tiny -machine. It sucked up such a mass of powdery sand particles that their -impact on the space suits was like a savage blow.</p> - -<p>Emptiness opened beneath the skid as sand went whirling up in a -sandspout the exact equivalent of a waterspout at sea. Stan and Esther -and the skid itself would have been torn away by its violence but that -the skid's drive was on full, now. The absurd little traveler thrust -sturdily downward. When sand was drawn away by wind, it burrowed down -eagerly to make the most of its gain.</p> - -<p>Its back-thrust kept a steady, cone-shaped pressure on the sand which -would have poured in upon it. Stan and Esther were buried and uncovered -and buried again, but the skid fought valorously. It strove to dig -deeper and to fling away the sand that would have hidden it from view. -It remained, actually, at the bottom of a perpetually filling pit which -it kept from filling by a geyser of upflung sand from its drive.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>In twenty minutes another whirlwind touched the pit briefly. The -skid—helped by the storm—dug deeper yet. There came other swirling -maelstroms....</p> - -<p>The nose of the skid touched solidity. It had burrowed down nearly -fifty feet, with the aid of whirlwinds, and come to the yacht <i>Erebus</i>.</p> - -<p>But it was another hour before accident and fierce efforts on Stan's -part combined to let him reach the air-lock door, and maneuver the skid -to keep that doorway clear, and for Esther to climb in—followed by -masses of slithering sand—and Stan after her.</p> - -<p>Inside the buried yacht, Stan fumbled for lights. He made haste to -turn off the signaling device that had led him back to it deep under -the desert's surface. And it was strangely and wonderfully still here, -buried under thousands of tons of sand.</p> - -<p>Esther slipped out of her space suit and smiled tremulously at Stan.</p> - -<p>"Now?"</p> - -<p>"Now," said Stan, "if you want to, you can start cooking. We could do -with a civilized meal. And I'll see what I can do toward a slightly -less uncertain way of life."</p> - -<p>He went forward. The <i>Erebus</i> was a small yacht, to be sure. It was -a bare sixty feet over-all, and of course as a pleasure craft it had -no actual armament. But within two bulging blisters at the bow the -meteor-repellers were mounted. In flight, in space, they could make -a two-way thrust against stray bits of celestial matter, so that if -a meteor was tiny it was thrust aside, or if too large the <i>Erebus</i> -swerved away.</p> - -<p>From within, Stan changed the focus of the beams. They had been set -to send out tiny reaction beams no larger than a rifle bore. At ten -miles such a beam would be six inches across, and at forty a bare two -feet. He adjusted both to a quickly widening cone and pointed one up, -the other down. One would thrust violently against the sand under the -yacht, and the other against the sand over it. The surface sand, at -least, could rise and be blown away. The sand below would support the -yacht against further settling.</p> - -<p>He went back to where Esther laid out dishes.</p> - -<p>"I've started something," he told her. "One repeller beam points up to -make the sand over our heads effectively lighter so it can be blown -away more easily. The storm ought to burrow right down to us, with -that much help. After we're uncovered, we may, just possibly, be able -to work the ship up to the surface. But after that we've got to do -something else. The repellers aren't as powerful as a drive, and it's -hardly likely we could lift out of gravity on them. Even if we did, -we're a few light-centuries from home. To fix our interstellar drive we -need the help of our friends of the grid."</p> - -<p>Esther paused to stare.</p> - -<p>"But they'll try to kill us!" she protested. "They've tried hard! And -if they find us we've no weapons at all—not even a hand-blaster!"</p> - -<p>"To the contrary," said Stan dryly, "we've probably the most ghastly -weapon anybody ever invented—only it won't work on any other planet -than this."</p> - -<p>Then he grinned at her. Now, he too was out of his space suit. The food -he'd asked her to prepare was out on the table, but he ignored it. He -took one step toward her. And then there came a muffled sound, picked -up by the outside hull-microphones. It grew in volume. It became a -roar. Then the yacht shifted position. Its nose tilted upward.</p> - -<p>"The first step," said Stan, "is accomplished. I can't stop to dine. -But—"</p> - -<p>He kissed her hungrily. Five days—six, now—in space suits with the -girl one hopes to marry has its drawbacks. An armored arm around the -hulking shoulders of another suit of armor—even with a pretty girl -inside it—is not satisfying. To hold hands with three-eighth-inch -space gloves is less than romantic. And to try to kiss a girl -three-quarters buried in a space helmet leaves much to the imagination. -Stan kissed her. It took another shifting movement of the yacht, which -toppled them the length of the cabin, to make him stop.</p> - -<p>Then he laughed and went to the control room.</p> - -<p>Vision screens were useless, of course. The little ship was still most -of her length under sand, but the repellers' cones of thrust had dug a -great pit down to her. Now Stan juggled the repellers to take fullest -advantage of the storm. At times—with both beams pushing up—the ship -was perceptibly lifted by uprushing air. And Stan could be prodigal -with power, now. The skid was sharply limited in its storage of energy, -but all the space between the two skins of the <i>Erebus</i> was a power -bank. It could travel from one rim of the Galaxy to the other without -exhausting its store. And the upward lift of whirlwinds—once there -were six within ten minutes—and the thrusts of the repellers gradually -edged the <i>Erebus</i> to the surface.</p> - -<p>Before nightfall it no longer lay in a sand pit. It was only half -buried in sand. And when the winds died down to merely savage gales, -at twilight, and then slowly diminished to more angry gusts, and at -long last there was calm without and even the impalpable fine dust that -settled last no longer floated in the air, and the stars shone—then -Stan was ready.</p> - -<p>He turned on the ship's communicator and sent a full-power wave out -into the night. He spoke. What he said would be unintelligible, of -course, but he said sardonically to the empty desert:</p> - -<p>"Yacht <i>Erebus</i> calling! Down on the desert, every drive smashed, and -not so much as a hand-blaster on board for a weapon. Maybe you'd like -to come and get us!"</p> - -<p>Then—and only then—he went and ate the long delayed meal Esther had -made ready.</p> - -<p>It was half an hour before the microphones gave warning. Then they -relayed clankings and poundings and thuddings on the sand. It was the -sound of heavy machines marching toward the <i>Erebus</i>. Scores of them. -The machines separated and encircled the disabled yacht, though they -were invisible behind the dunes all about. And then, simultaneously, -they closed in.</p> - -<p>The landing beams of the <i>Erebus</i> flashed out. Light flickered in the -chill darkness. The beams darted here and there.</p> - -<p>Then the machines appeared. The scene was remarkable. Over the dunes -marched gigantic metal monsters, many-legged, with bodies as great as -the <i>Erebus</i> itself. Great bulges on their forward parts gave the look -of eyes, as if these were huge insects marching to devour and destroy. -As the landing-light beams flickered from one to another of them, huge -metallic tusks appeared, and toothed jaws—used for excavation. They -were not machines designed for war, but they were terrifying, and they -could be terrible.</p> - -<p>Esther's hand on Stan's shoulder trembled as the monsters closed in. -And then Stan, in the unarmed and seemingly defenseless little space -yacht, swung the meteor-repeller controls and literally cut them to -pieces.</p> - -<p>"We're barbarians," said Stan, "compared to these folk. So we've an -advantage. It's likely to be only temporary, though!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He watched the carcasses of the great machines, flicking the -landing-light beams back and forth. They were tumbled terribly on the -ground. Some were severed in two or three places, and their separate -sections sprawled astonishedly on a dune-side. One was split through -lengthwise. Another had all of one set of legs cut off clean, and lay -otherwise unharmed but utterly helpless.</p> - -<p>Out of that incapacitated giant a smaller version of itself crawled. -It was like a lifeboat. Stan watched. Other small versions of the -great machines appeared. One made a dash at the <i>Erebus</i>, and he -cut it savagely in two. There was no other attack. Instead, the -smaller many-legged machines ran busily from one to another of the -wrecks—seeming to gather up survivors—and then went racing away into -the dark.</p> - -<p>Then there was stillness.</p> - -<p>"They knew we saw them," said Stan grimly. "They knew we could smash -them. And they realized that we wouldn't unless they attacked again. I -wonder what they think of us now?"</p> - -<p>"What you did to them was—awful," said Esther. She shuddered. "I still -don't know what it was. I never heard of any weapon like that!"</p> - -<p>"It could only exist here," said Stan. He grimaced. "We've -meteor-repellers. They push away anything in their beam. I narrowed -them to their smallest size and put full power into them. That was all."</p> - -<p>"But meteor-repellers don't cut!" protested Esther.</p> - -<p>"These did," said Stan. "They were working through sand, just that. -They pushed it. With a force of eighty tons in a half-inch beam. -The sand that was in the beam was shot away with an acceleration of -possibly fifty thousand gravities—and more sand kept falling into the -beam. Each particle was traveling as fast as a meteor when it hit, -over there. When it struck, it simply flared to incandescent vapor. No -atomic torch was ever hotter! And there was no end to the sand I threw. -You might say I cut those machines up with a sand blast, but there was -never such a sand blast as this! It took a barbarian—like me—to think -of it!</p> - -<p>"Now," he added, "I need to go over to those machines and get some -stuff I think they've got in them. That's what I provoked this attack -for. But maybe the drivers are laying low to jump on me if I try it. -I'll have to wait until nearly dawn. They won't risk waiting until -almost time for the sandstorms! Not with fifty miles to travel back to -the grid!"</p> - -<p>He stayed on guard. Presently he yawned. He stood up and paced back -and forth, glancing from time to time at the screen. After a long time -Esther said:</p> - -<p>"You didn't sleep last night, Stan. Could I watch for a while so you -can rest?"</p> - -<p>"M'm-m. Yes. If anything stirs, wake me. But I don't look for action -here. The real action will be back underground."</p> - -<p>He went back into the cabin and threw himself down. Almost instantly -he was asleep. Esther watched the vision-plates dutifully. There was -silence and stillness everywhere. After a long time she looked in on -the sleeping Stan. A little later she looked in again, reached over, -and touched his hair gently. Later still she looked in yet again. She -kissed him lightly—he did not wake—and went back to the control -cabin, to watch the vision-plates.</p> - -<p>Nothing happened.</p> - -<p>Out in space, though, very many millions of miles away, a tiny mote -winked into existence as if by magic, with the cutting off of its -Bowdoin-Hall field drive. It hung seemingly motionless for a while, as -if orienting itself. It seemed to locate what it sought—and vanished, -but again winked into being a bare few thousand miles from the planet's -surface.</p> - -<p>It did not disappear again. It drove down toward the half-obscured disk -at the normal acceleration of a landing drive. Toward dawn it screamed -down into atmosphere above the planet's surface. It drove on into the -day, and into howling winds and far-flung sand. It rose swiftly, and -went winging toward the summer polar cap.</p> - -<p>Khor Alpha's single planet had gone unvisited by men during two -centuries of interstellar travel, but now there had been three separate -visitations within ten days.</p> - -<p>The last of the three visitors settled to ground where hoarfrost partly -whitened the desert's face. A full-power carrier-wave spread out from -it. And in the control room of the <i>Erebus</i> a speaker suddenly barked -savagely:</p> - -<p>"Stan Buckley! I'm here to kill you! Communicate!"</p> - -<p>Esther gasped. She recognized the voice. Rob Torren! Back more than -two months before Stan had expected him! The words did not make sense -to her. Stan had tried to spare her despair by concealing the fact -that Torren's return would be to kill him, under a compact which her -presence here made void.</p> - -<p>"Rob!" cried Esther softly into the transmitter. "Rob Torren! It's -Esther calling! Esther Hume!"</p> - -<p>An indescribable sound from the speaker. With trembling hands she -adjusted the vision receiver. She looked into the taut, drawn, raging -features of Rob Torren. He stared at her out of the screen.</p> - -<p>"Stan's asleep, Rob!" cried Esther eagerly. "He didn't expect you back -for a long time yet! You're wondering how I got here? Oh—"</p> - -<p>Laughing a little, joyously, she told of her desperate voyage to be -with Stan when he should be tried, and how her drive had been burnt out -by impinging on the drive of the space skid on which Stan had left the -<i>Stallifer</i>. And of course she told of her subsequent meeting with Stan.</p> - -<p>"And there are inhabitants here," she finished eagerly, "and they've -been trying to kill us."</p> - -<p>She was all joy and relief at Torren's arrival. But his face was -ravaged by conflicting emotions, all of them intense and all harrowing.</p> - -<p>"But—what's the matter, Rob?" she asked. "You look so queer!" Then she -added in abrupt, startled doubt. "And Rob! Why did you say you had come -back to kill Stan? You were joking, weren't you?"</p> - -<p>He raged at her instantly. "He coached you, eh? To pretend you didn't -know anything? Trying to make me take you both to safety on a promise -of fighting me later? It won't work! I've a line on your wave and I'll -be coming! I'll be coming fast! And maybe you've no weapons, but I -have! I've a Space Guard one-man ship! I forced the <i>Stallifer</i> to dock -at Lora Beta and put me ashore! I got this ship to hunt back for Stan, -claiming his recapture as my responsibility! I did plan to have him -write you a letter before I killed him, but since you know everything -now—"</p> - -<p>She saw the beginning of an infuriated movement. Then the screen went -blank.</p> - -<p>After a moment's frightened irresolution she went to Stan. She woke -him, and after the first three words he was sternly alert.</p> - -<p>"This sets things up nicely!" he said bitterly. "You didn't know about -him, of course, but—our friends of the grid are concocting weapons -to destroy us, and now he's streaking here along his locator line to -blast us with everything a Space Guard ship can carry! And he'll have -long-range stuff! He can burn us to a crisp if we put a repeller beam -on him! We can't sand-blast him! We can't—"</p> - -<p>He began to struggle swiftly into a space suit. Esther said:</p> - -<p>"Wherever you're going, I'm going too!"</p> - -<p>"You're not!" he said harshly. "You'll go in the control room with your -hands on the beam controls. If some of the local citizens are hiding in -those wrecks, you'll smash them if they jump me! I haven't so much as a -pocketknife! You've got to be my weapons while I dig into those wrecks!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He went swiftly out the air-lock with only a cutting-torch in his -hands. He fairly ran toward the débris of the attacking army of -machines. He reached the first. It had been sliced longitudinally in -half by a stream of sand particles traveling at fifty miles or better -per second, in a stream of air of the same velocity. Nothing could have -withstood such an attack. No material substance in the universe could -have resisted it. Four-inch plates of steel and foot-thick girders had -been cut through like so much dough, the severed edges gone not to -liquid but to vapor in the deadly stream.</p> - -<p>The whole mechanism of the machine was exposed. The great biting jaws, -designed to tear away huge masses of intermingled sand and ice. The -tusks to break loose sections for the jaws to handle. The tanks to -contain the precious damp material. The machine had not been made for -fighting, but it, alone, could have torn the <i>Erebus</i> to fragments. -With an army of such machines—</p> - -<p>Stan clambered into the neatly halved shell with his cutting-torch. All -about him were small devices, cryptic things, the strictly practical -contrivances of a hundred-thousand-year-old civilization. He itched -to examine them, but he needed certain bars of allotropic graphite -he suspected would be here. They were. The motors which ran the leg -movements were motors like those which turned the great slabs. They -consisted of slabs of graphite and the metal which slid past them. That -was all. Only one special allotrope of graphite makes a motor of such -simplicity. Only—</p> - -<p>He burdened himself with black, flaky bars, cutting ruthlessly through -machinery to which an engineer would have devoted months of study. He -had an even dozen of the bars in his arms when a sudden blast rocked -him. He whirled, and saw a small cloud of still incandescent vapor and -Something which was separating horribly into many steaming pieces. -Other Things seemed to leap to smother him under their weight. He could -not see them save as vague shapes, but he knew they were there.</p> - -<p>Another exploded as Esther, in the <i>Erebus</i> and watching with the -infrared scanner, desperately used the weapon which had never existed -before and could not be used anywhere save on this one planet.</p> - -<p>Stan ran clumsily for the ship over the drifting, powdery sand. -Inhumanly resolute unhuman things leaped after him. He saw the flares -as Esther destroyed them. He knew that she was wide eyed and trembling -and sick with horror at what she had to do.</p> - -<p>But he stumbled into the air-lock and dogged it shut behind him. And -Esther came running to greet him, not shaking and not trembling and not -horrified, but with burning eyes and the fiery anger of a Valkyrie. She -was not wearing her space suit.</p> - -<p>"They tried to kill you!" she cried fiercely. "They were hiding! -They'd have murdered you—"</p> - -<p>He put down his bars of allotropic graphite. He reached out to take her -in his arms. But—</p> - -<p>"Damn these space suits!" he said furiously. "You'll have to wait to be -kissed until this job's finished!"</p> - -<p>He tore up the flooring hatch above the little ship's drive. He jerked -off the housing.</p> - -<p>"Keep watch!" he called to the control room. "At least one of the -machines must be waiting behind the dunes, hoping for a break!"</p> - -<p>He worked with frantic haste, shedding his space suit by convulsive -movements. This should have been the most finicky of fine-fitting -jobs. To repair a Bowdoin-Hall drive unit by replacing its graphite -bars for maximum efficiency is a matter for micrometric precision. -But efficiency was not what he wanted, now, but speed. And these bars -almost fitted. They were vastly unlike the five-hundred-pound monsters -for the grid slabs. These should at least move the ship, and if the -ship could be moved—</p> - -<p>He had two of them in place and six more to go when the speaker in the -control room blared triumphantly.</p> - -<p>"Stan Buckley! Tune in! I'm right above your ship! Tune in!"</p> - -<p>Stan swore in a sick disgust. Two out of eight was not enough. He was -helpless for lack, now, of time. And the corrosive hatred that comes -of helplessness filled him. He went into the control room and said -drearily to Esther:</p> - -<p>"Sorry, my dear. Another twenty minutes and you'd have been safe. I -think we lose."</p> - -<p>He kissed her, and with fury-steadied fingers tuned in the -communication-plate. Rob Torren grinned furiously at him.</p> - -<p>"I thought I'd let you know what's happening," said Torren in a voice -that was furry with whipped-up rage. "I'm going to go back and report -that you were killed resisting arrest. I'm going to melt down the yacht -until it could never be identified as the <i>Erebus</i>—if anybody ever -sees it again! And—maybe you'll enjoy knowing that I did the things I -charged you with, and have the proceeds safely banked away! I faked the -evidence that proved it on you. And I hoped to have Esther, too, but -she's spoiled that by trying to come and help you! Now—"</p> - -<p>"Now," said Stan coldly, "you'll stand off a good twenty miles and beam -us. You'll take no chances that we might be able to throw a handful -of sand at you! You'll be so damned cautious that you won't even come -close to see your success with your own eyes! You'll read it off on -instruments! You're pretty much afraid of me!"</p> - -<p>"Afraid?" raged Rob Torren. "You'll see!"</p> - -<p>The communication screen went blank. Stan leaped to the meteor-repeller -controls and stared at the vertical vision-plate which showed all the -sky above.</p> - -<p>"Not the shadow of a chance," he said coldly, "but a beam does make a -little glow! If he misses us once—but he won't—maybe I can get in one -blast...."</p> - -<p>There was tense silence. Deadly silence. The screen overhead showed a -multitude of cold, unwinking stars. One of them winked out and on again.</p> - -<p>"I'll try—" began Stan.</p> - -<p>Then the screen seemed to explode into light. Something flared like -a nova in the sky. Intolerable brilliance filled a quarter of the -screen—and faded. Swiftly. It went out.</p> - -<p>Stan drew a deep breath.</p> - -<p>"That," he said softly, "I think was a hundred thousand million -horsepower in a power beam. I think our friends the grid makers have -been working on armament to fight us with, and I think they've got -something quite good! They don't like strangers. Torren was a stranger, -and they got a shot at him, and they took it. And now they'll get set -to come over here after us. If you'll excuse me, I'll go back to the -drive!"</p> - -<p>He returned to the cabin where two out of a necessary eight graphite -bars were in place. He worked. Fast. No man ever worked so fast or so -fiercely or with such desperately steady hands. In twenty minutes he -made the last, the final connection. And just as he dropped the hatch -in place, Esther called anxiously:</p> - -<p>"More machines coming, Stan! The microphones pick them up!"</p> - -<p>"Coming!" he told her briskly. He went to the instrument board and -threw switches here and there. "The normal thing," he said evenly, -"would be to lift from the ground here, on landing drive, and go into -field drive out of atmosphere. But we won't do it for two reasons. One -is that we have no landing drive. The other is that at normal take-off -acceleration, our friends of the grid would take a potshot at us with -the thing they used on Rob Torren. With a hundred thousand million -horsepower. So—here goes!"</p> - -<p>He stabbed a simple push button.</p> - -<p>With no perceptible interval and with no sensation of movement, the -<i>Erebus</i> was out in deep space. The screens showed stars on every -side—all the stars of the Galaxy. And these were not the hostile, -immobile, unfriendly stars the first voyagers of space had seen. With -the Bowdoin-Hall field collapsing forty times a second, the stars moved -visibly. The nearer ones moved more swiftly and the farther ones more -slowly, but all moved. The cosmos seemed very small and almost cosy, -and the stars mere fireflies and the Rim itself no more than a few -miles away from them.</p> - -<p>Stan watched. He said, "We're not making much time. Not over six -hundred lights, I'd say. But we'll get there."</p> - -<p>"And—and when we do—"</p> - -<p>"H'm," said Stan. "You can swear Torren said he'd committed the crimes -he charged me with and faked the evidence against me. With that -testimony, they'll examine the evidence as they do when there are no -witnesses. It'll fall down. And I'll be cleared."</p> - -<p>"Stan!" said Esther indignantly. "I meant—"</p> - -<p>"And when I'm cleared," said Stan, "we'll get married."</p> - -<p>"That," admitted Esther, "is what I had in mind."</p> - -<p>He kissed her, and stood watching the moving cosmos critically.</p> - -<p>"Our friends the grid builders have gotten waked up now," he observed. -"They know they're not the only intelligent race in the universe, and -they may not like it. They're a fretful crew! But they'll have to be -made friends with. And quick, or they might cause trouble! I think I'll -apply to be assigned to the task force that will undertake the job. It -ought to be interesting! Not a dull moment!"</p> - -<p>Esther scowled at him.</p> - -<p>"Now," she protested, "you reduce me to being glad we're not making our -proper speed! Because after you get back—"</p> - -<p>"Listen, my dear," said Stan generously, "I'll promise to come home -from time to time. And when I do I'll grab you like this, and kiss you -like this—" There was an interlude. "And do you think you'll manage to -survive?"</p> - -<p>Esther gasped for breath. But she was smiling.</p> - -<p>"I—I think I'll be able to stand it," she admitted.</p> - -<p>"Good!" said Stan. 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