Eando Binder: Anton York, Immortal

Instantly York became cold, wary.

The dome builders had finally answered the attack he had made against their domes. He put his protective screen up to full power. No matter what weapons they had, he knew his screen would stand at least a few minutes of battering. He could flee, as a last resort, if his own weapon failed. Out in space, he knew a hundred tricks for eluding pursuers. There was no immediate danger.

He had tensed himself for attack, but it did not come. Instead, from the Ione ship, came the clarion voice of telepathy.

“You are Anton York, of Earth?”

“Yes. You have my wife, Vera, in captivity. My first demand is that you release her. Secondly, your dome experiment whatever it is, must be stopped. The various races must be returned to their own worlds.”

The psychic voice that came back seemed to be laughing. “Indeed! You have appointed yourself champion of the universe, Anton York?”.

“Call it what you want,” York shot back. “I only know that those races are suffering. They have been for too long under the dominance of the hypno-beasts. The Beasts must be destroyed to the last one.”

The other being seemed to stop laughing and became very sober.

“Exactly. And now we have found the way.”

Startled, York almost bit his tongue.

“You mean you have wanted the Beasts destroyed? Your long, elaborate experiment is for that end? But why—”

“I will explain all. Come with me to our main world, the Ninth planet.”

“Wait! If this is trickery, I have a powerful weapon.”

As answer, a tongue of queer green light suddenly sprang from the alien ship. It licked greedily around York’s ship. His electro-screen melted away as though it were cotton. The tip of the green tongue flicked against the hull and gouged out a chunk of meteor-hard metal, with the ease of a whip flicking off a patch of human hide.

York felt it as a tremendous shock that jarred through every inch of the ship, as if a mountain had been hurled down on him. He gasped. His screen, against which great meteors at the speed of light would have cracked to powder, had been pierced as easily by the green ray as a knife going through butter.

Illimitable power! Gigantic might! These the alien must have.

York had to know the full bitter truth. He tripped the lever of his great gamma-sonic weapon, training it dead-center on the other ship. The blast that emerged would have bored a hole ten miles deep in solid steel. It crashed against the alien’s screen, threw up a shower of sparks and dissipated. It dissipated like vagrant smoke. York was helpless.

“You see?” came from the alien. “We are supreme scientists. Your puny screen would go down in an instant, if I used any amount of power. But your death is not wished. Up to now we’ve patrolled space against possible expeditions from any planet. But we no longer have to. Follow me.”

York followed. They arose from the planet of domes and arrowed toward the Cepheid sun. Within an hour, at the speed of light they had neared the fifth planet. It was strangely like Earth, blue and cloud-wreathed. But only under the waning rays of the variable sun. Under its maximum rays, it must change to a hell hot purgatory, ten times more trying to life than the fierce humidity of Venus.

“You live under domes on your planet?” York queried, before they landed.

“No,” came back promptly, politely. “We live in the open. Our whole evolution has been adjusted to the periodic change. We live in frigidity during the wane, and in superheat when our sun waxes, and it is all the same to us. It is the keynote, Anton York, of the story I will soon have to tell.”

York’s ship landed, after the alien’s, in a wide field surrounded by a gleaming city that took his breath away. York had seen countless civilizations, but none so manifestly magnificent as this. He was aware of various subtle impressions. First, a vague air of sadness hung over the city. But it was an air of sadness that was lifting like mist under a bright sun.

Also, he noticed several ships, in the huge spaceport, hovering as though awaiting their arrival. They dipped. York was not sure, but the ships seemed to be saluting him! The burning mystery of it all, piled pyramid high in York’s seething mind. In some way, York, or something he represented, was a hero to these people.

He stepped out in his spacesuit, all thought of personal danger gone. The being from the other ship was like the one he had seen once before—thin, spindly, large-headed. His resplendent dress, of fine-spun metallic cloth, suggested high rank. By the deference of his crew and the others around, he must be of the highest rank.

“Yes, I am Vuldane,” the being returned, catching Bork’s thought “King of our race, the Korians. Follow me to my palace. Your wife, Vera, is there.”

York stepped eventually into a huge, glittering chamber.

He saw only one thing however. Vera stood in a spacesuit ahead.

He crushed her in his arms. He couldn’t say or telepath a word, at finding her safe.

“Tony, dear,” she said. “I worried for you. But I knew you would be brought here safely.”

She was amazingly calm. And behind her calmness was an odd, puzzled look. York looked around carefully. Suddenly he grasped her wrist. With his other hand he jerked a weapon from his belt, a smaller edition of his gamma-sonic force. He pointed it at Vuldane’s unprotected chest.

“Vuldane,” he snapped mentally. “I came here only to find my wife. Now, unless you want to die, command free departure for us from this planet. I’ll talk with you in space, later, if you come in an unarmed ship. I’ll give you three seconds.”

The king stood rooted in surprise, though not fear. York counted three then began to squeeze the trigger. But something knocked the gun down. It was Vera herself.

“Tony—no! It would do no good. They would hound you down. You must listen to their story first. And when it’s done, you will wonder yourself what is right and what is wrong.”

York holstered his gun. It had been a mad thing to do. But the past adventures, and the staggering mystery of it, had unbearably tortured his nerves. He whirled on the king, who seemed unperturbed.

“Tell me the story quickly. You are planning to conquer the universe?”

“No. We are too civilized for such paltry ambitions.” “All right. But you are propagating the hypno-beasts for some malign purpose. Revenge on another race?”

“No. We want the hypno-beasts killed as I told you. Every last one, if possible.”

“But why then the bell jar experiment? There is some threat to my world. I feel it. You want Earth?” “No. We do not wish your world, Earth!”

“Talk sense!” York groaned.

“Tony, don’t ask wild questions and interrupt,” Vera admonished. “Let him tell his story. Just listen.”

VULDANE nodded. “You would not have harmed me with your gun, by the way. This room is in an energyless field. No weapon works in it. Now listen. This is the story of our race—and our doom!”

“We evolved to intelligence a million of your years ago. Vera and I have compared notes. We did not evolve under this sun, but under the rays of another Cepheid, variable, at almost the other end of this universe. We lived there industriously and happily for a hundred thousand years. Then our astronomers announced that the sun was due soon to explode into a nova, killing all life on its planets. Cepheids are unstable stars.

“We had to migrate. But we had to find another Cepheid. And to make it difficult, we had to find a Cepheid with the exact period of waxing and waning that our original sun had—twenty-two days. Our biology, our metabolism, our very life-spark, is adjusted to that pulse beat, as yours is adjusted to a uniform condition.”