But space was empty about it. A sun without planets is a rarity so strange that is almost impossible. This sun had possessed Ades. Nevertheless Kim searched for Ades. He found nothing. He searched for debris of an exploded planet. He found nothing. He set cameras to photograph all the cosmos about him, and drove the Starshine at highest interplanetary speed for twelve hours. Then he looked at the plates.
In that twelve hours the space-ship had driven some hundreds of thousands of miles. Even nearby stars at distances of light-years, would not have their angles change appreciably, and so would show upon the plates as definite, tiny dots. But any planet or any debris within a thousand million miles would make a streak instead of a dot upon the photographic plate.
There was nothing. Ades had vanished.
He aimed for the star Khiv and flashed to its vicinity. The banded planet Khiv Five swam sedately in emptiness. Kim drove for it, at first on mere overdrive, and then on the interplanetary drive used for rising from and landing on the surface of worlds. He landed on Khiv Five.
Women looked at him strangely. A spaceship which landed on Khiv Five—or anywhere else, for that matter—must certainly come from Ades, but ships were not commonplace sights. Kim was no commonplace sight, either. Six years before, the men on Khiv Five had died in one rotation of the planet. Every man and boy was murdered by the killing-beams of the now defunct Sinabian Empire. Now there were only women, save for the very few men who had migrated to it in quest of wives, and had remained to rear families.
The population of Khiv Five was overwhelmingly female.
Kim found his way to the governing center of the capital city. Dona walked with him through the city streets. There were women everywhere. They turned to stare at Kim. They looked at Dona with veiled eyes.
Long years on an exclusively feminine world does strange things to psychology. There were women wearing the badges of mourning for husbands dead more than half a decade.
In a sense it was a dramatization of their loss, because all women, everywhere, take a melancholy pleasure in the display of their unhappiness. But in part to boast of grief for a lost husband was an excuse for not having captured one of the few men who had arrived since the mass murder. As a matter of fact, Kim did not see a single man in the capital city of Khiv Five, but its streets swarmed with women.
He asked for the head of the planet government, and at long last found an untidy woman at a desk. He asked what was known of Ades.
"I was on Terranova," he explained. "The matter-transmitter went off and it did not come back on. I came back by space-ship to find out about it, and went to where Ades should have been. I'm Kim Rendell, and I used to be a matter-transmitter technician. I thought I might repair the one on Ades if it needed repairing. But I could find no planet circling Ades' sun."
The woman regarded him with what was almost hostility. .
"Kim Rendell," she said. "I've heard of you. You are a very famous man. But we women on Khiv Five can do without men!"
"No doubt," Kim said patiently. "But has there been any word of Ades?"
"We are not interested in Ades," she said angrily. "We can do without Ades."
"But I'm interested in Ades," ' said Kim. "And after all, it was Ades which punished the murderers of the men of Khiv Five. A certain amount of gratitude is indicated."
"Gratitude!" said the untidy woman harshly. "We'd have been grateful if you men of Ades had turned those Sinabians over to us! We'd have killed them every one—slowly!"
"But the point is," said Kim, "that something has happened to Ades. It might happen to Khiv Five. If we can find out what it was, we'll take steps so it won't happen again."
"Just leave us alone!" said the untidy woman fiercely. "We can get along without men or Ades or anything else. Go away!"
CHAPTER III
Dangerous Trip
DONA plucked at Kim's arm. He turned, seething, and went out. Outside he vented his bitterness.
"I thought men were crazy!" he said. "If she's the head of the planet government, I pity the planet."
"She could talk to another woman quite rationally," Dona said with satisfaction. "But she's had to persuade herself that she hates me, and you had me with you, and I'm prettier than she is, Kim, and I have you. So she couldn't talk to you."
"But she's unreasonable," Kim said stubbornly.
"We'll go back to the ship," said Dona brightly. "I'll lock you in it and then go find out what we want to know."
She smiled comfortably all the way back to the Starshine. But the staring women made Kim acutely uncomfortable. When he was safely inside the ship, he wiped perspiration from his forehead.
"I wouldn't want to live on this planet!" he said feverishly.
"I wouldn't want you to," said Dona. "Stay inside, darling. You'd better not even show yourself at a vision-port."
"Heaven forbid!" said Kim.
Dona went out. Kim paced up and down the living quarters of the ship. There was something in the back of his mind that would not quite come out. The disappearance of Ades was impossible. Men had conquered one galaxy and now started on a second, but never yet had they destroyed a planet. Never yet had they even moved one. But nevertheless, only thirty-six hours ago the planet Ades had revolved about its sun and men and women had strolled into its matter-transmitter with no hint of danger, and between two seconds something had happened.
Even had the planet been shattered into dust, its remnants should have been discoverable. And surely a device which could destroy a planet would have had some preliminary testings and the galaxy would have heard of its existence! This thing that had happened was inconceivable! On the basis of the photographs, Ades had not only been destroyed, but the quintillions of tons of its substance had been removed so far that sunlight shining upon them did not light them enough for photography. Which simply could not be.
Kim wrestled with the problem while Dona went about in the world of women. There was something odd about her in the eyes of women of Khiv Five. Their faces were unlike the faces of the women of a normal world. On a world with men and women, all women wear masks. Their thoughts are unreadable. But where there are no men, masks are useless. The women of Khiv Five saw plainly that Dona was unlike them, but they were willing to talk to her.
She came back to the Starshine as Kim reached a state of complete bewilderment. Ades could not have been destroyed. But it had vanished. Even if shattered, its fragments could not have been moved so far or so fast that they could no longer be detected. But they were undiscoverable. The thing was impossible on any scale of power conceivable for humans to use. But it had happened.
So Kim paced back and forth and bit his nails until Dona returned.
"We can take off, Kim," she said quietly.
She locked the inner airlock door as if shutting out something. She twisted the fastening extra tight. Her face was pale.
"What about Ades?" asked Kim.
"They had matter-transmission to it from here, too," said Dona. "You remember, the original transmitter on Ades was one-way only. It would receive but not send. Some new ones were built after the war with Sinabia, though. And this planet's communication with Ades cut off just when ours did, thirty-six hours ago. None of the other twenty planets has communication with it either. Something happened, and on the instant everything stopped."
"What caused it?" Kim asked, but Dona paid no attention.
"Take off, Kim," she said. "Men are marching out of the matter-transmitter. Marching, I said, Kim! Armed men, marching as soldiers, with machine-mounted heavy weapons. Somebody knows Ades can't protect its own any more, and invaders must be crowding in for the spoils. I'm—afraid, Kim, that Ades has been destroyed and our planets are part of a tyrant's empire now."