"I just don’t see what makes it work!" confessed Phath in bewilderment. "Where does all that power come from?"
In rare good humor, despite the sordidly Venusian (and therefore swampy) meal, Zoar could not help chortling.
"That is the idea, friend Phath," he chuckled. "Where does a ray of light go, when it has gone past you?"
The Venusian shrugged. "To the ends of the universe, I guess."
"Ah! But the universe has no ends; space is curved; a ray of light bends back upon the space it has already traversed—and does so endlessly," said the savant.
"So?"
"So every cubic foot of space is, at every split-second of time, filled with a flux of radiant energy that has been traveling through curved space from the Big Bang until now. It only has to be tapped to be used ... and the energy thus tapped is truly infinite," Zoar said.
"Which implies that, with a truly infinite source of energy upon which to draw, you can construct a spacedrive that will give you enough thrust to—almost—achieve the speed of light," said Star Pirate.
"Precisely," chuckled Zoar. "The only barrier to speed is enough energy to achieve it. With my super-drive (abominable term, but I fear we’re stuck with it!) we have the energy. And will have all the speed we need. Trust me, boy ... and, by the way, that deduction was very clever of you. Whoever was your teacher?"
Star grinned, white teeth flashing in his space-tanned face.
"You were, you old fraud!"
"Why, bless my soul, so I was!" snickered Zoar, enjoying himself immensely. He wriggled bare toes in his sandals, where his feet were propped up and toasting before the fire, and took another sip of Star's best brandy. It wasn't quite as fine as his Dustlands Golden, but it would do in a pinch, he thought to himself.
Phath was staring moodily into the depths of the blaze, pink eyes veiled and brooding. "Any problem?" inquired Star, noticing his sidekick's gloomy mood.
Phath roused himself with a shudder and a bit of a shiver. "No, chief, nothing—really! It's just . . . you say the robot workshop will take about a week to outfit the Roger with Zoar's new drive, and then we'll be ready to go ... into the unknown—!"
"That's right," nodded Star, unconcernedly. But the words reverberated in his mind long after he had bade his friends goodnight and had gone off to seek his bunk. Over and over they echoed through his dreams that night, and for nights thereafter.
"Into the unknown—!"
4. The Space-Storm
The Jolly Roger climbed skyward on a pillar of atomic fire. Far below, the twilit surface of Haven dwindled and was lost amidst the whirling storm of meteors which surrounded the little moonlet like some protective moat. Star switched to the computer pilot, and let the trim little speedster steer herself through the barrier of spinning chunks of frozen rock, guided by the coded radio signals broadcast from beacons planted amidst the swarm.
For two weeks the robot workshops underneath the dome-dwelling had toiled around the clock, as automata refitted the little scoutcraft with the outsized rocket-tubes of Dr. Zoar's design. Now the speedster looked clumsy and unbalanced with the heavy cluster of tubes at its stern, but Star was more than willing to trade aesthetics for a drive that would carry them to Pluto—and beyond—at the colossal speeds the diminutive Martian savant had promised.
The little craft dipped far below the plane of the ecliptic, so as to be in clear space, uncluttered by asteroid fragments and wandering meteorites, and before very long they had traveled on conventional drive far enough for Zoar to cut in his super-drive.
The moment was a tense one: within seconds, weeks of labor might prove to have been wasted on a flawed theory, a faulty plan. Zoar wrinkled his brow in a hideous scowl, as if daring the new engines to fail to fire. Star looked serious, concerned, but, as for the Venusian, he maintained the skepticism he had evinced ever since first hearing of the newfangled system of propulsion.
"Bet you my new gunbelt and holsters the gadget blows a fuse," Phath hissed to the redhead—just loud enough for the Martian scientist to hear. Zoar scowled even more ferociously, and thumbed the activator. A deep-throated resonance entered into the drumming song of the roaring rockets, but there was no other change. Beyond the televisor screens, stars glittered against the ebon backdrop of space like sequins sewn upon the velvet curtains of some enormous theatre.
"I told you—!" chortled Phath; even Star looked puzzled and dubious; but, as for Zoar, he only smirked and indicated the fancy new velocitometer attached to the control board. The two adventurers bent to study the dial ... and saw that already the ship’s speed had gone off the conventional velocitometer and they were traveling at speeds hitherto undreamed of.
"Yaklar’s ... tungsten ... tonsils!" gasped the Venusian, his pink eyes widening. Such speeds were phenomenal. "Why don’t we—feel the difference in speed?" he blurted, mystified.
"Because of my new stasis field, of course, simpleton!" snarled Zoar. "Its field of force cradles each sub-atomic particle in a cushioning web of force ... otherwise, our velocity would wreck the ship’s internal structure, and we would be plastered all over the walls."
"Well, I’ll be a—a—” stammered the Venusian, for once at a lack for words. Zoar grinned malignantly, preening.
"If you need an appropriate epithet, friend Phath," he growled in his bass tones, "I believe I can supply a few—?"
A brief exchange of insults ensued, as usual. Sighing, Star Pirate left the control room in Phath’s charge and went into his cabin to store away his luggage. It seemed the little argument soon fizzled out, for the next time he passed the entrance to the control room, Phath was stretched out in the big chair, plucking on his Venusian guitar and singing an old space-chanty in his soft, sibilant voice:
and in the next instant, Phath choked off his song with a squawk of dismay as the Jolly Roger shuddered underfoot and the alarms began to clamor.
"A space-storm, chief!" yelled the Venusian. "And we’re hulled by a meteorite—"
5. Adrift in Space
Star snapped a curse to every space god he knew, and sprang to the emergency override controls. Already, the craft was losing air in an ear-splitting shriek through the punctured hull, and it was becoming swiftly more and more difficult to draw breath. Star spun a wheel and slammed a lever home; air-tight emergency compartment doors slid out of the walls to seal off the danger area. Fortunately, it was back in the tail compartment where the store rooms were located.