Eando Binder - Anton York, Immortal

“All of your people!” responded Vuldane softly.

York was past shock. He could only stare, as if turned to stone.

“All of your people,” repeated the alien. “It will not be a simple task, even with Earth people immunity, and our science given to them. The time is short now, before our sun explodes. We must move all your people to the Beasts’ planets, setting them up in fortresses which we will build. Many, perhaps most, of your people will succumb at first, till the following generations develop immunity. Finally they will wax strong, sweep out and conquer the Beasts completely. Then we will sow some disease among your people to kill them, and our new home will be ready for our occupancy.”

York’s psychic voice was a deadly hiss.

“By what right do you consider it your privilege to destroy my race to save yours?”

“By what right,” returned Vuldane, “do you consider your race more worthy of continuation than mine? We were civilized long before yours. If you think we are merciless in sacrificing an alien race for our benefit, what of your own race? To this day it fights among itself at times. We haven’t had internecine war for half a million years. Tell me, Anton York. Outside of your own personal prejudice, who is to judge whether we are wrong or right, except as necessity drives us?”

York could think of no answer. He knew now what Vera had meant before. It was the old story of Cro-Magnon man killing off Neanderthal. White men destroying the redmen of America. Earth people expanding into interplanetary space and the flower people of Ganymede dying out. On a grander scale, this was the same thing. A vigorous, highly civilized, powerful race was grimly holding onto its place in the sun. Could they be blamed?

York answered at last “No: There is no question of right or wrong in any scale of cosmic morals. But here is one thought, Vuldane. My people have millions of years ahead of them. Their sun is stable. You, on the other hand, are a doomed race. You will live another hundred thousand years in your new system, and then again that Cepheid will explode. Is it worth murdering my race, facing a million-year future, to save yours for one-tenth that? Can you pass into your inevitable oblivion with that on your conscience?”

“A strong point,” nodded Vuldane. “Except for one thing. Our astronomers have measured all the stars. A new Cepheid is being born in a certain star group. It is beginning to pulse slowly. In the slow timescale of the cosmos, it will not be a full-fledged Cepheid for another hundred thousand years. But if we gain our new breathing spell, as outlined, that Cepheid will be ready for us. And other Cepheids are being born, our astronomers note. Through them, we also have a limitless future ahead of us!”

York deflated utterly. He could already picture, in his mind’s eye, the nine planets of his sun, barren and deserted—human life gone. He looked up suddenly.

“All, you say, Vuldane. But there are more than ten billion of my race. Surely you can leave a few thousand behind, to breed our race again.”

Vuldane shook his head, with a combination of pity and ruthlessness.

“No. We dare not leave any of your race. Once they grew strong again, we would only have to destroy them later. Better that your race goes into total oblivion now.”

York could see that point, too. Knowing the crusade spirit of his own people, they would one day swoop down on the Korians, to right an old wrong. There would only be bitter interstellar war. The Korians, for their own sake, would have to guard against that.

And again it was not a question of right, or wrong, or cruelty, or anything in normal terms. This was something above and beyond such meaningless phrases out of Earth’s old law books.

“How much time is there?” he asked dully. “How soon before your Cepheid explodes into a nova?”

“Just a short thousand years. It will take all that time to bring your people, set them all in fortresses, and help them battle the beasts. And for us to migrate when that is done. The time is short.”

York drew himself up.

“Only one thing I ask, Vuldane.”

“Yes?”

“Before you begin taking my people, give me a certain time to try to figure out some alternative.”

Vuldane pondered. “The transference should begin immediately. However, it will take a year to complete our first fleet of ships capable of plunging through the space-time wall that separates our two universes. I give you that year, Anton York.”

Suddenly he thrust out his spindly hand.

“And good luck!”

YORK’S ship sped through the void at a pace that left laggard light far behind. His face was grimly set as, he took a course for the planetary system of the hypno-beasts. Vuldane had readily given the data.

“A year, Vera,” York said desolately. “A short year in which to save the human race! I must not sleep for that year Drugs will keep me going. Somehow there must be a way.”

“What do you expect to do among the Beasts?” Vera asked tonelessly.

“Anything,” York stated. “Anything possible.”

In a day they were there. The Cepheid sun was an exact duplicate of the one they had left. Its ten planets were large and widespread, fairly crawling with the hateful hypno-beasts. They had a semi-civilization. They bred whole races of creatures for their blood-food, for their ten planets of loathsome vampirism. Luckily they had no space ships. The whole universe—this and all others—would become theirs. They populated the ten planets simply through the accident of separate, parallel development.

York could feel the powerful beat of their hypnotic force radiating en masse from them. It dragged at his mind as gravity dragged at his ship. Recklessly he power-dived over one planet, spraying down his gamma-sonic rays, cutting a wide swath among them. The hypno-force clutched at him. Twice more he dived recklessly and barely won free the third time.

“Tony, please! It’s senseless.”

York nodded helplessly.

“I need a long-range projector. We’ll build one. No. We’ll have the Korians build us one.”

The ship sped back the way it had come. Vuldane readily agreed. Almost overnight his technicians turned out a super-projector for York’s ship and back he raced. With this he whipped his ship in a tight orbit around one planet and sprayed down the destroying rays in a band ten miles wide, from directly above the surface.

“If this works, Vera,” said in vague hope, “we’ll have a million more made. And I’ll go to Earth and get a million strong-minded men, and we’ll sweep every planet clean. The Korians weren’t able to get close enough to the planet.” But gradually he felt the finger of hypnotic force reach for him. His telescope revealed thousands of the massed hypno-beasts below, directing a combined hypno-ray upward at him. He kept up his deadly beam even when he felt, the cloying, insidious urge to drop down and yield to the Beasts. Sweat beaded his brow. God, what frightful mental power they had!

He had not watched Vera. Suddenly he noticed her at the locked controls, unhitching them and plunging the ship down. Her movements were jerky, robotlike. She was in a hypnotized trance.

“Vera!”

York left his gun and leaped for her. She turned on him, clawing and scratching. York bit his lip and swung his fist, knocking her cold. He zoomed the ship up, barely in time. His whole body had begun stiffening at the powerful clutch of massed hypnotism, from below. He whipped the ship into free space.

“Vera, forgive me,” he muttered when he brought her to with a dash of cold water. “Well, that’s out. The men from Earth would have as little, or less chance than I had.”

“Vuldane said they tried everything,” Vera murmured hopelessly. “Theirs is the only way. Setting Earth people down there, after blasting a space with their super-science. Letting them breed and produce immune generations. A thousand-year job, Tony—and we have only a year. It might as well be a second.”