His second was equally safe and precise and it took him to Mars. He brought back photographs and artifacts for proof. And the third flight, aimed at a more distant objective to check the physical constants governing the space-drive, had reached Calypso, the largest of Jupiter's moons.
That makeshift craft, though, could only make flights as stunts. The Stellaris had been begun to carry an adequate crew of scientists for the study, first of Sol's other planets, ultimately for roaming the stars so that human colonies could begin to spread throughout the Galaxy. Rod Cantrell had been given charge of the ship's construction, and he had been promised her command.
But now he'd been handed orders from the Space Project Commission which dashed all his hopes. He was not only relieved of the duty of supervising the Stellaris' construction but was bluntly informed that he would not even be a member of her crew when she left Earth—because of his wild tale of an inimical race, possessing space-ships, which would threaten the peace of Earth.
Kit said, gulping, "It's not fair, Rod! It's stupid! It's unjust! You deserve—"
"That doesn't matter," said Rod. "What does matter is what can happen. This decision is on account of my report on that pyramid on Calypso."
"But you did the right thing!" insisted the girl. "There wasn't anything else to do!"
"That was my opinion," said Rod, "but the Commission doesn't agree. I think they feel that I consider myself too famous and that I'd like to stop space-travel so I'd stay the only man who ever achieved it."
"Nonsense!" scoffed Kit
"They've suspected that report from the beginning," Rod added. "They've never allowed any reference to the pyramid to be published. They said it would cause public alarm. Of course, it would imperil their jobs.
"Their places were created to encourage space exploration. If they discouraged it, instead, the Commission will be scrapped and they'll have no salaries. I hate to think of so great a risk being run just so some political appointees can stay on salary."
Kit Bowen made a scornful sound. She wasn't exactly engaged to Rod, because engagements were no longer considered matters that existed formally to be announced. But they had planned to marry. Rod knew now that it had become doubtful He could have played it more or less safe, and guided a scientific expedition in the Stellaris in search of proof of what he knew.
But he'd tried it the right way, with full reports and an effort to throw the Committee behind research for defense. As a result, he was kicked upstairs. He'd never have another chance. And to be a permanent desk-officer—Kit wouldn't care, but he would.
Riveters pounded on the Stellaris' metal skin like monster woodpeckers hunting giant grubs. They were putting on the flotation-bulges, designed to make her float merrily, even if she landed in a sea of liquid ammonia.
The air-lock construction-doors of the ship opened. Electricians came out and headed for the commissary for lunch. Two girls, no doubt assistants in biology working on the air-purifying plant, also came out of the lock, chattering, and went briskly to the same place.
The air-system for the ship was already installed and was being tested by being run to purify the air used by workmen on the inside of the already-sealed hull. The ship's corridors were still bare metal though and it would be many weeks yet before the living quarters were fitted out, the computers and astrogation instruments put in, even the first of the ship's stores accumulated.
But the field-generators and tractor and pressor beams were in and had already been tried out. The ship would positively go anywhere in the galaxy that her crew demanded, though she was the first Earth-ship ever built for space-travel. Only Rod knew that she wasn't the first space-ship. There were others.
The thing was that the crews of the other ships, roaming among the stars, weren't human crews and they wouldn't welcome human competition.
He'd learned that from a silvery-metal pyramid, some thirty feet of seamless stuff on every side. It was out on Calypso, on the very peak of the highest and most singular of the mountains of that sub-satellite. It had not been built on Calypso and certainly men hadn't made it but the creatures who had made it knew that men existed.
There were bas-reliefs of human forms upon its brightly-gleaming metal sides and there were two human-size metal doors that could obviously be opened by simply turning the handles of two human-sized locks. Its location was one that would certainly be visited by any human explorer of Calypso, if only so that he could leave a record of his visit there for later voyagers to find. And that so-human pyramid, suggesting earlier visitors still, would almost irresistibly impel the first man to reach Calypso to turn the door-handles and go in.
But Rod Cantrell hadn't done that. Perhaps because of war experience, perhaps because he didn't like the artwork. He cut into the structure with a thermite torch, leaving the doors alone. He found it packed with machinery which surely wasn't of human design, and he struggled to understand it
In the end he found a power-storage unit that was far and away beyond anything of human manufacture. He cut the power-leads and traced connections. And then he caused the doors to open. In opening they swung contacts and controls and he saw that they'd have sent the power—some hundreds of millions of kilowatts—in a mighty surge of energy through a device he didn't begin to understand but which was obviously some sort of radiation-generator.
And instantly thereafter the whole pyramid and its machines began to smoke and were glowing faintly by the time he got out of it. It melted itself and dissolved in a pool of melted metal—which exploded when the cut-off power-unit blew. So that he had nothing but a verbal description to offer with his report—and he wasn't quite believed.
CHAPTER TWO
Take Off
NOW he stood beside the incomplete hulk of the Stellaris with the orders that ended his career in his hand. "It still seems to me that I did the right thing," Rod said bitterly. "I guessed it as a sort of booby-trap. It was a gadget to signal somebody, somewhere, when men climbed up to the point of achieving space-travel! And who'd want to be warned when we reached that stage? Not friends certainly! If they'd been friendly they'd have helped!"
"Of course they would!" said Kit with conviction. "I kept that signal from being sent," said Rod. "If I'd kept my mouth shut I'd have commanded the Stellaris and we'd have found another one—there's probably another on the central peak in Tycho's crater on the Moon—and I could have made the Commission see it
"But I had to tell about it, believing my word would be taken. So now somebody else will take the Stellaris out and it'll be pretty odd if the signal doesn't get sent off when he finds another pyramid. And then what'll happen? What would we do if we'd been traveling among the stars for ages and found a new, upstart race getting ready to compete with us? And a rather pugnacious race, at that? We'd smack them down and fast!"
Kit said, agreeing fully, "If we found them before they'd reached that point we'd try to make friends with them."
"Whoever built the pyramid found us," said Rod, drearily. "Maybe a few thousand years ago. Maybe at the time they knocked off the Martians. They didn't bother exterminating us then. We weren't worth the trouble, though the Martians were."
He shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. "Anyhow I've got my orders. Somebody'll come to take over from me within hours. I'm going to take a last look over the ship and then clear my desk and get ready to leave. Want to come with me?"