Gordon felt a terrifying surmise, and it was verified by Zarth Arn's next words.
"The records of Brenn Bir described the Magellanian aliens as having a mental power so terrific that no human or nonhuman could withstand it. Only by disrupting space and hurling them out of this dimension were those invaders defeated. And now... it seems that after all these thousands of years, they are coming back again!"
10
The Marches of Outer Space had been, originally, an area only vaguely delimited. Early galactographers had defined it as that part of the galaxy which lay between the eastern and southern kingdoms, and the edge of the island universe. For when, in the twenty-second century, the three inventions of the faster-than-light sub-spectrum rays, the Mass Control, and the stasis-force that cradled men's bodies so that they remained impervious to extreme speeds and accelerations... when these made interstellar travel possible and the human stock poured out from Earth to colonize the galaxy, it had been toward the bigger star-systems they had gone, not the rim. Millennia later, when distant systems had broken away from Earth government and formed independent kingdoms, hardy adventurers in those kingdoms had gone into the starry wilderness of the Marches, setting up small domains that often were limited to one star and one world.
These counts of the Marches, as they called themselves, had always been a tough, insolent breed. They owed allegiance to no star-king, though they had a nominal alliance with the Empire which prevented the other kingdoms from invading their small realms. The place had long been a focus of intrigue, a refuge for outlawed men, an irritation on the body politic of the galaxy. But each jealous star-king refused to let his rivals take over the Marches, and so the situation had perpetuated itself.
"And that" thought Gordon, "is too damned bad. If this anarchic star-jungle had been cleaned up, it wouldn't harbor such danger now." He wondered how many of the counts were in the conspiracy with Cyn Cryver. There had to be others, because Cyn Cryver alone could not provide enough ships for any significant action. If a significant action was what they had in mind.
The little phantom scout was well inside the Marches now, moving on a devious course. By interstellar standards, the phantom's speed was slow. Its defensive armament was almost nonexistent and its offensive weapons were nothing more than a few missiles. But it possessed a supreme advantage for such a stealthy mission as this one... the ability to disappear. That was why there were phantoms in the fleet of every kingdom.
"It'd be safer to dark-out," said Hull Burrel, frowning. "But then we'd be running blind ourselves, and I don't like doing that in this mess."
Gordon thought that if it was a mess, it was an impressive one. Scores of stars burned like great emerald and ruby and diamond lamps in the dark gloom. The radar screen showed shoals of drift between these star-systems, and here and there the Marches were rifted by great darkness, loops and lanes of cosmic dust.
He looked back the way they had come, at the Hercules Cluster that blazed like bright moths swarming thick about a lamp, at the far dimmed spark of Canopus. He hoped they would live to go back there. He looked ahead and his imagination leaped beyond the stars he could see to those out on the Rim, the spiral, outlying arms of stars that fringed the wheeling galaxy, and beyond which there was nothing until the distant Magellanic Clouds.
"It's too far," he said to Hull. "Zarth Arn must be wrong; there can't really be Magellanians in the Marches. If they had come they wouldn't have come as stealthy infiltrators, but in a great invasion."
Hull Burrel shook his head. "They came that way once before, so the histories say. And they got annihilated, when Brenn Bir used the Disrupter on them. They might try a different way, this time." The big Antarian captain added, "But I can't believe it, either. It was so long ago."
For a long time the little phantom threaded its way into the Marches, skirting great areas of drift that flowed like rivers through space, tacking and twisting its way around enormous ashen dark stars, swinging far wide of inhabited systems.
Finally there came a time when, peering at the viewer, Hull Burrel pointed out a small, bright orange star glittering far away.
"That's it. The sun of Aar."
Gordon looked. "And now?"
"Now we dark-out," grunted the Antarian. "And from here on it'll be cursed ticklish navigation."
He gave an order. An alarm rang through the ship. The big dark-out generators aft began droning loudly. At that moment all the viewer-screens and radar-screens went dark and blank.
Gordon had been in phantoms before, and had expected the phenomenon. The generators had created an aura of powerful force around the little ship, which force slightly refracted every light ray or radar beam that struck it. The phantom had become completely invisible both to eye and to radar, but by the same token those in it could see nothing outside. Navigation now must be by the special sub-spectrum radar by which the phantom could slowly feel a way forward.
In the time that followed, Gordon thought it was remarkably like a twentieth-century submarine feeling its way through ocean depths. There was the same feeling of blindness and semi-helplessness, the same dread of collision, in this case with some bit of drift the straining radar might not catch, and the same half-hysterical desire to see sunlight again. And the ordeal went on and on, the sweat standing out in fine beads on Hull Burrel's forehead as he jockeyed the little ship closer toward the single planet of the orange star.
Finally, Hull gave an order and the ship hung motionless. He turned his glistening face toward Gordon.
"We should be just above the surface of Aar, but that's all I can say. I hope to God we don't come out of dark-out right over our enemies' heads!"
Gordon shrugged. "Jon Ollen said there wasn't much on this world, that it was mostly wild."
"One thing I love is an optimist who has no direct responsibility," growled the Antarian. "All right. Dark-out off!"
The droning of generators died. Instantly there poured into the bridge through the viewer screens a flood of orange sunlight. They peered out tensely, blinking in the brilliance.
"I apologize, optimist," said Hull. "It couldn't be better."
The little ship hung level with the top foliage of a golden forest. The plants... Gordon could not think of them as trees, although they were that big... were thirty to forty feet high, graceful clusters of dark-green stems whose branches held masses of feathery golden-yellow leaves. They bore a remote but disquieting resemblance to the trees of Teyn and Gordon shivered, hoping it was not an omen. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but the roof of the forest glittering in the light of the orange sun.
"Take her down fast," ordered Hull. "We could just be ranged by radar up here."
The phantom dropped through the masses of lacy gold and landed in a grove of clustered stems, upon soft ground covered with a copper-colored brush that bore black fruits.
Gordon, peering fascinated through the viewer, suddenly shouted. "Something!"
The Antarian jumped to his side. "What?"
"It's gone now," said Gordon. "Something small, almost invisible, that darted away under the brush."
The other looked doubtful. "In the star-log, this world Aar is listed as uninhabited. An attempt was once made to colonize it but the colonists were driven away from it by dangerous conditions. This could be some formidable creature."
Gordon was doubtful. "It seemed too small."
"Nevertheless, we'd better have a look around before we go thrashing through these forests," the Antarian said decisively. He spoke to the crewmen in the bridge. "You and I will go out, Varren. Full armor."