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  Science Fiction

  June 1939

  Vol. 1, No. 2

  Custom eBook created by

  Jerry eBooks

  July 2016

  An imaginative civilization pronounces its own doom in defiance of Dr. Bronzun’s “wild theories”! But he and the brave companions set out upon a search for the proverbial needle in a haystack—where the haystack is the entire Universe!—and he fights to save humanity, despite itself!

  CHAPTER I

  OPPOSITION

  ROLAN FOSTAR piloted his trim aerocar high in the speed lanes, under the night sky of summer, barren of stars. Below his course, in successive areas marked by glowing air-buoys, hummed the slower craft. Now and then huge flying wings lumbered by, laden heavily. Much of the freight commerce of 2450 A.D. was carried by air, to all parts of the Earth.

  Yorkopolis, largest city of Earth, sprawled underneath the busy aircraft. The Manhattan of previous centuries had spilled over into surrounding territory, like a sluggish monster of metal and stone. At its edge, the atomic-energy blasts of rockets luridly etched slim spires against the black sky as space craft catapulted up.

  Man had burst his two-dimensional prison five hundred years before. His domain included space and the planets.

  But Rolan Fostar scarcely noticed all this, familiar with it since birth. His thoughts were not of Man’s present, but the future. His eyes probed the black, brooding vault of sky, starless save for three of the planets.

  What mystery lay up there, in the Beyond? What ominous, looming menace?

  His young, strong body was tense with that wonder. His lean and determined face, tanned by long hours of space sunlight, reflected challenge—challenge against fate, whatever it held in store. Rolan Fostar had been cut in the pattern of those who bend but never break. His clear blue eyes, calm but capable of fire, looked upon the cosmos as a vast proving-ground for human endeavor. His one creed was that the race could, and must go on, against all the obstacles of time, space, and destiny.

  IN A FEW more minutes he had reached his destination, a towering edifice of Martian greenstone. It housed the offices of Interplanetary Real Estate Corporation, the largest of its kind in that age. Fostar brought his aerocar down deftly on the broad landing roof, and climbed out.

  A uniformed attendant approached. “Your business, sir?” he asked politely.

  “I’m from Dr. Bronzun’s laboratory,” stated Fostar. “Marten Crodell wishes to see me.”

  “I will inform him you are here. You may wait up here, or down below in the reception room, as you wish.”

  “I’ll wait here,” returned Fostar, striding toward the roof’s parapet. He leaned on it, gazing down at the widespread city. But his eyes turned upward, as though to a magnet. Up there lay the Beyond, the last frontier of the known universe.

  In the Beyond lay—nothing! Not even stars. Just garnet Mars glinted up there, and yellow Saturn and scintillant Venus, the latter already setting, following the sun. Through the dark night there would be only the two planets and the moon, which was just now rising. It loomed up like a great yellow lamp, shedding a pale glow.

  But no stars!

  Earth’s night face was, at this season, looking directly out into the Beyond. Six months later, during winter, the night firmament would be a blaze of stars, all those stars that lay back of the Earth and sun. For Earth was at the edge of the universe.

  At the Edge of Space!

  FOSTAR’S eye caught a slight movement in the shadows a few feet away. Startled, he looked into the face of a girl, as the moon’s first beam crept over the balustrade.

  A queer shock went through him. She seemed to blend with the setting, eerily. Her face was almost elfin, oval and softly angular. Her lips were half parted in astonishment, and her eyes were deep pools in which the moonlight danced and came out again in amber shades. By her attitude, Fostar guessed that she had been as startled as he. He heard her sharp gasp.

  “I’m sorry I frightened you,” he murmured. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t frightened,” she said, a little defiantly. Her voice was low, musical. Then, as though an explanation were required, she added, “I was just looking up in the sky, and wondering—” But she broke off the sentence, with an odd little shake of her auburn-haired head.

  “Wondering what? What lies up there in the Beyond?” asked Fostar, with quickening interest. “I’ve often done that,” he went on, seeing her glance of surprise. “The edge of space, as we know it, is at our doorstep. We are probably the only intelligent beings who have ever been this close!”

  Somehow, it seemed quite natural to Fostar to talk of these things with this girl, though she was a total stranger. Keen interest glowed in her face. Where most others would have been offended at the lack oi convention, or completely unintrigued by the topic, this girl quickly followed his cue.

  “It’s so mysterious!” she said softly. “Almost—ominous!” She shuddered slightly, though there was no hint of chill in the warm summer breeze.

  The man nodded soberly. “There is a threat in it, too,” he agreed. “If Earth passes into the Beyond—”

  Her eyes were suddenly on his, wide and startled. She interrupted. “Are you one of those—those fools who believe that?” she cried.

  Fostar stood dumfounded at her sudden vehemence. “Fools?” he repeated sharply. “You just said yourself—”

  “The Beyond is ominous, but remote,” she interposed. “Surely you don’t believe Earth is in danger?” She made a contemptuous gesture. “You’ve been reading Dr. Bronzun’s bogey-man story!”

  The young man’s face burned, beneath its tan. “It happens that I’m Rolan Fostar, assistant to Dr. Bronzun!” he snapped.

  “Oh!” She faced him for a moment in confusion. “I’m sorry for what I said,” she murmured. Then, with feminine caprice, mocking lights stole into her elfin eyes. “How quaint—for grown men to make up fairy-tales!”

  Anger hammered in Fostar’s pulses, but before he could release the hot words on his lips, a hand touched his elbow. It was the attendant, back again. “Marten Crodell will see you now, sir,” he informed, turning to lead the way below.

  Fostar hesitated a moment, glaring at the girl. Then he twisted on his heel, but after three steps he whirled.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded impulsively.

  She peered at him half indignantly for a moment. Then—“Alora. Alora—Templeton,” she smiled.

  The girl remained in Rolan Fostar’s mind while he followed his guide down greenstone steps, across carpeted corridors, and finally in an elevator to the very topmost part of the building’s slim tower. He might ordinarily have taken more notice of the sumptuous interior of Interplanetary Real Estate Corporation, which he saw for the first time. Its richness bespoke the wealth and extent of its financial empire in the Solar System. Tapestries of Venusian silk, furniture of loan glow-wood, and the odd murmuring plants of Titan in niches lent an otherworldly air to the place.

  But the girl slipped from his mind when he was ushered finally into the presence of Marten Crodell, in a small room faintly redolent with the exotic perfume of Rhean horticulture.

  Marten Crodell, seated at a glow-wood desk, was a tall, thin man, more ungainly than the tele-news usually pictured him. He was ascetic in appearance—narrow face, pinched cheeks, thin nose and lips, close-cropped hair. He was dressed in unrelieved black. His eyes were strange—dark and shadowed, staring out like two glowing coals from the sallow complexion
of his skin. Fostar noticed his hands, thin and nervous, the fingers constantly flexing and unflexing.

  The two men stared at each other for a moment. Fostar felt himself being sized up, weighed, by the man who controlled the largest privately-owned institution on Earth and in the Solar System—a man whose wealth in terms of money was incalculable. Fostar, in turn, flatly thought of Crodell as one who bought power. Those fingers, clenching and unclenching, were grasping—clutching—

  “Dr. Bronzun?”

  Marten Crodell’s voice, high-pitched and terse, shattered the silence. He frowned. “I had thought you would be an older man—” Fostar gave his name and added, “Dr. Bronzun sent me in his place.”

  “I wanted to see him!” snapped Crodell. “Why didn’t he come here?”

  “Because everyone doesn’t have to come running at your least command!” flared back Fostar, still half-angered from the episode with the gild. He strode to the desk and leaned over it. “I only came here myself, Marten Crodell, to tell you that to your face. You may wield a scepter of power over thousands of men, here on Earth and the planets, but not all others. Next time you want to see Dr. Bronzun, come to our laboratory!”

  Fostar turned for the door.

  “Just a minute, young man!”

  The tones, strangely enough, were half apologetic. Fostar hesitated, then turned back. After all, Dr. Bronzun had told him to find out what Marten Crodell wanted. Fostar had let his anger cany him away. He met the eyes of the plutocratic land-owner and saw in them a faint gleam of approbation, perhaps admiration.

  “I like your spirit, Fostar.” The thin lips smiled slightly. “Sit down, please. I wished to see Dr. Bronzun about something very important. I presume you are qualified to answer for him?”

  “I’ve been with him for five years, as assistant in his laboratory, and pilot of his space-ship, on his researches,” asserted Fostar.

  “Good enough,” nodded Crodell. He turned to a tele-news recorder on a stand beside his desk and flicked the switch. With a quiet hiss, the recording roll rotated within and a clear, electrical reproduction of voice came forth.

  “The following is unofficial and unconfirmed,” spoke the announcer’s smooth voice. “Dr. Jole Bronzun claims he now has fully confirmed his own prediction of a year ago—that Earth and the Solar System will plunge into the ‘Edge of Space,’ within a half-century. Our velocity toward the ‘Beyond’—as he calls it—is about 18,000 miles a second. He has obtained this result, he says, by careful measurements on Mars, Ganymede and Oberon. The Edge of Space, he declares, is no more than five light-years away.

  “Secondly, Dr. Bronzun warns that catastrophe will result! Earth and all the planets will be destroyed, when they reach the Edge of Space. In the Beyond, he predicts, there are no cosmic rays. There is complete nothingness. All the normal laws of the universe that we know are null and void. Matter and life cannot exist in such a negative space.

  “Dr. Bronzun has not, as yet, offered any alternative to this annihilation, if his prophecies are correct. But he pleads that other scientists hasten to confirm his results and then take up the important matter of what to do to save the human race. We repeat that this report is unofficial and unconfirmed.

  “Bulletin from Dardo, Mars. Reconstruction of Canal M-3 progressing—”

  MARTEN CRODELL snapped off the instrument and eyed Fostar.

  “That news item, taken up by the greedy news-agencies as thrilling fodder for the masses, was broadcast yesterday to millions of people, throughout the System. Your Dr. Bronzun has sown a seed of fear in many gullible hearts. It is flagrant sensationalism!” The land-owner crashed a thin fist on his desk for emphasis. “It must never happen again!”

  “Why?” challenged Fostar calmly. “Did the Interplanetary stock market drop a few points—spoil some of your financial deals?”

  The sallow face across the desk darkened. “That has nothing to do with it,” Crodell growled. “As a matter of fact, there was a Blight drop in the market. Six times in the past year, Dr. Bronzun has made these wild reports, and each time there has been a growing reaction. It can eventually lead to panic among the masses. That is what I’m afraid of!”

  “And that is what we want!” said Fostar quietly. “Not panic, actually, but an awareness of the doom that faces us!”

  “You actually believe that?” gasped Marten Crodell, as though the thought were utterly novel. “I’d surmised your game was cheap publicity, for some invention, perhaps. But now I see that you are fanatics! You have a phobia, a fixed obsession, that such a doom threatens!”

  Rolan Fostar looked grim. “I wish it were just a phobia, but figures don’t lie.” He stood up again, talking rapidly, earnestly. “Our galaxy, or island universe, lies in a unique position—near the true Edge of Space. As you and everyone are aware, our summer skies show no stars, no nebulae—nothing. We look out upon nonspace!”

  Crodell waved a hand. “It has been the same for hundreds of thousands of years,” he scoffed. “Why be alarmed at this late date?”

  “Because we have been approaching the Edge of Space all that time!” pursued Fostar. “Our particular galaxy is roughly wheel-shaped, as most of them are. It is turned edgewise to the Beyond, and is rotating. And our sun and planet system are right now at the topmost swing of this gigantic wheel! Only five more light-years of distance separate us from the verge of the Beyond—from the Edge of Space!”

  “The Edge of Space!” sneered Crodell. “Dr. Bronzun invented the term. It’s a figment of his mind.”

  “You want facts,” Fostar continued inexorably. “All right. At our laboratory we have a set of news-records, collected in the past year. Do you recall the inexplicable occurrence during the Olympic Games at Byrdville, Antarctica—where a certain high-jumper leaped twenty-five feet? He wasn’t able to duplicate the performance, nor could the other athletes. For just a brief moment, the law of gravity had slipped. Then, in a European village last winter, matches could not be lighted for a stretch of several hours. The laws of friction had temporarily been suspended. There are many other cases.

  “All these add up to one thing,” he concluded. “The Edge of Space is not a sharp line of demarcation. We are already within the fringes of it, accounting for the isolated examples of suspended natural laws. Spacetime is thinning, and when Earth reaches deeper into the Beyond, chaos will result!”

  Marten Crodell seemed undisturbed. “Granting all that,” he remarked shortly. “There is still no danger. Astronomers have determined that our sun, rather than going outward, is moving inward toward the rest of the universe.”

  “They have used the wrong system of—” began Fostar.

  The land-owner glowered. “All the eminent astronomers of Earth are wrong—and Dr. Bronzun is right?” he mocked.

  Rolan Fostar felt helpless dismay steal into him. No use to go on. It was like a voice crying in the wilderness, against all the inertia and stability of a ponderous civilization.

  He glared bitterly at the land magnate.

  “Marten Crodell,” he pronounced, “the day is coming when your money empire will fall into ashes. Because the only hope for the human race—”

  “Theatrics!” exploded Crodell. “I won’t hear any more of it.” His voice became harsh, his eyes hard. “You and Dr. Bronzun are croaking fanatics, I’m convinced of that. I warn you that I can’t tolerate any more scaremongery. I’ll crush you, if I must, and I have the power to do it. For one thing, you will never be able to send a message over the public news-casts again—I’ve seen to that. Furthermore, if you don’t retract your last statement within three days, I’ll swear our a warrant for your arrest!”

  Fostar shrugged, realizing the interview was over. “You must make a bad enemy,” he observed. “But you can’t fight the truth, Marten Crodell!”

  CHAPTER II

  “A FOURTH PASSENGER . . .”

  WITHOUT another word he jerked open the door and strode down the hall. An attendant came hurrying after him, to gu
ide him politely to the landing roof.

  Rolan Fostar stood for a moment, beside his aerocar, letting the evening breeze cool his hot forehead. He looked up at lonely Mars and Saturn, in the empty sky, and the moon. No stars. The Beyond ate up stars, for other suns must have blundered to the Edge of Space. Sol would go on, to its doom. And here the world lay, unaware, stupidly complacent in a false security. He felt like shouting it out over the housetops, but that would do no good. Years from now they would awake to the menace—when it might be too late!

  A white form glided forward from the shadows. Fostar turned and looked at the elfin face of Alora Templeton, softly illumined by silvery moonlight. He caught his breath at the picture.

  “You saw Marten Crodell?” she asked. “What did he say?”

  “Everything stupid!” Fostar said fiercely, anger welling in him again. Anger at the girl, too. “He wouldn’t listen to me either. But we’ll show him. We’ll take a ship out there, to the Edge of Space, and bring back proof!”

  The girl gasped. “You can’t go out there!” she protested. “The fastest ship can go only 10,000 miles a second. It would take you 90 years to go out to that Beyond you speak of. How foolish—”

  “Foolish, eh?” he almost snarled at her. “We’ll see who the fools are!”

  She started to speak, but he jumped into his aerocar and slammed the door. Not till he was skimming high over the city did he feel remorse for letting his temper get the best of him, both with Crodell and the girl—particularly the girl. His grim lips loosened a bit as his mind’s eye conjured up her face, a saucy face, and yet somehow sweet. If the future did not loom with such portentous things, he would have the right to think of going back to her. But he couldn’t. Very likely he would never see her again.

  Dr. Jole Bronzun had spent a lifetime studying the cosmos, but a human lifetime is short compared to the majestic motions and schedules of galactic systems. He had not seen the finger of doom pointing till the year before—pointing toward the Beyond!