The cosmic cloud
together were of his ability to do so.
"Here," he answered, "these disks--upon your eyes----"
As he spoke he was taking from somewhere on his person two flat little
disks an inch or so across, one of which he fastened upon each of my
eyes by means of vacuum-sucked rims. I uttered an involuntary cry of
astonishment; for as I looked through those disks of glass, the utter
darkness that had been about me since first we had been drawn into the
great cloud gave way instantly to a pulsing violet light that illumined
all things around me.
I could see clearly the towering walls of the two buildings between
which we crouched, the narrow street outside in which I had had
my battle, and my companion also. He was, I saw, in truth a tall
bat-winged figure with strong beaked face and intelligent dark eyes,
and I recognized him at once as one of the batfolks who inhabit the
worlds of the sun Deneb. Deneb! Thought of it brought flashing back
to my mind a thing that the Chief had told us before our start, and I
seized my companion's arm.
"Zat Zanat!" I cried "You're Zat Zanat, the scientist of Deneb who went
into the cloud years ago to explore it!"
He nodded. "I am Zat Zanat," he acknowledged, "and years it has been,
in truth, since I came into this cosmic cloud, this place of darkness
and horror unutterable."
"But it's not darkness to you!" I exclaimed, pointing to the two disks
which he wore before his own eyes. "With these you can see in this
absolute blackness--though I don't know how."
"I can tell you that soon enough," he said, "but you--how comes it that
you were roaming this city of the creatures of darkness?"
Swiftly I explained to him how we had been sent to investigate the
drawing in of thousands of the galaxy's ships into the cloud, and how
having been drawn into it ourselves we had been captured and brought
to this city where I had made my escape. He listened intently, nodding
once or twice, and when I had finished asked a question.
"You wandered into one of the great masses of captured interstellar
ships they are preparing. But did you guess why they drew those ships
into the cloud, for what they are preparing them?"
At my negative his expression grew solemn. "They are preparing those
thousands of captured ships, Dur Nal," he said, "for an enterprise that
means horror to our galaxy: they are preparing to burst out of the
cosmic cloud upon the galaxy in all their numbers and seize our suns
and worlds in a conquest of darkness!"
"Of darkness?" I repeated, and he nodded.
"Within hours they leave this world and the cosmic cloud, to pour out
into the galaxy, for even as we talk here their great plans are coming
to their climax--plans that I have seen them form and carry out in the
years I have been here.
"For it is years I have spent on this world of darkness in the great
cloud. You have heard how years ago I, Zat Zanat, resolved to do what
none ever had done, to explore the cosmic cloud's interior. I knew that
light could not exist in it, for its darkness is formed by the meeting
of ether-currents which generate etheric vibrations of a frequency that
neutralizes all light-vibrations.
"It was my plan to see in the darkness of the cloud by the vibrations
beyond light, the ultra-violet vibrations. They were not neutralized,
not affected, and I devised certain ray-filter disks or glasses that
made the eyes sensitive to the ultra-violet vibrations, and thus showed
all things in violet light, since the ultra-violet rays have the same
sources as light-rays.
"Equipped with these glasses I and my assistants ventured into the
cosmic cloud in our cruiser. Its interior lay in violet light before
us, and after cruising in near its center we descried a small planet
that hung motionless in it. We landed to explore it and found it
inhabited by strange eyeless creatures of darkness who had evolved on
it in the ages and who, because they had evolved in utter darkness, had
no eyes at all but had a hearing so marvelously keen that it served
them instead.
"Hardly had we landed on this world when the creatures captured us.
They took us before their rulers, who examined us. These eyeless
creatures had never imagined that other worlds might lie outside the
cloud, nor had they any space-ships. But learning that there were many
worlds outside, they began to plan how they might pour out and seize
them, for their numbers were cramped on this small world.
"My assistants they slew, but kept me, torturing me with the
pain-producing weapons to gain information from me. They saw that they
would need thousands of great ships to enable them to pour out on
the galaxy, and had not the means of making them soon. They devised,
therefore, a way of drawing in the numbers of ships they needed from
those coming and going in the galaxy around the cloud.
"This was to increase many times the magnetism of their world. Every
world in space is a great magnet with north and south poles, as
you know, and they planned to increase the magnetic power of their
world thousands of times by a means they knew, which involved the
simultaneous electrical charging of both their world's poles.
"They prepared the apparatus at the poles and placed the control of it
on the top of the great building of their rulers. When that control was
closed the magnetism of this world at the cloud's heart was suddenly
intensified thousands of times. Its tremendous power reached out
through the cloud and caught great swarms of the interstellar ships
passing outside, and drew them swiftly in.
"Had they left the control closed their world would have drawn in
those ships to smash in annihilation against it, but just after the
helpless ships were drawn into their world's atmosphere the control was
opened and the magnetic grip released. Then while the swarms of ships,
helpless in the darkness, were in their atmosphere, their own ships
they had constructed in small numbers and which they could operate
in space by means of reflected electrical-sound vibrations instead
of sight--in these ships they went up and boarded and captured the
helpless vessels.
"They brought them down to this world's surface, those inside them
helpless in the darkness against these people of darkness. Almost all
inside the captured ships they slew with the pain-producers, but a few
who they thought would be useful to them they saved and prisoned as I
was prisoned in the building of the rulers.
"Soon afterward they repeated this process, closing the control and
drawing in new swarms of ships from outside the cloud. And again they
did the same thing and with the same result. The fourth time they
captured but one ship, your own, but this can have made no difference
to them, for their first three operations had brought them in thousands
of great interstellar ships in which all the eyeless hordes could be
contained.
"Already they had almost completed the refitting of these ships,
fitting them with their vibration-guiding devices, and also with the
mechanisms they will take with them for their conquest of the galaxy.
These are mechanisms each of which can destroy all light for a vast
space around it by neutralizing the light-vibrations even as is done by
neutral forces here in the cloud.
"And with these they will conquer the galaxy inevitably. For they
need but settle upon a world and with their mechanisms or one of them
destroy all light in and around it. Plunged in absolute darkness, its
blind peoples will be unable to strike back at the eyeless creatures
who, used to darkness and at home in it, can wipe out the others at
their leisure with the pain-producers.
"Already their last preparations are being finished, already their
hordes streaming toward the waiting masses of interstellar ships. It
was that knowledge that made me desperate, and in desperation I managed
to escape from the building of the rulers that was my prison. I have
kept always with me the ultra-violet sight-glasses, and with a pair of
them was able to elude the creatures, hoping to steal a cruiser and
get out to the galaxy to warn it. But I could not get near any of the
ships, and in going through the city in a vain hope of doing so I saw
you battling with and killing that creature and came to you."
* * * * *
When Zat Zanat had finished his strange tale I was silent for a moment,
gazing out into the narrow violet-lit street beside which we crouched.
"You think then that the only hope is to steal a cruiser and get out of
the cloud to warn the galaxy before the attack comes?" I asked.
He nodded quickly. "What other hope is there? Nothing can halt this
invasion of theirs, for before an hour more is past, it may well be,
their hordes will be pouring out of the cloud in their cruisers. You
can hear them making ready now."
"But what of my friends? I can't escape and leave Jhul Din and Korus
Kan here, or the others either."
He thought for a moment. "For your cruiser's crew there is no hope,"
he said, "for the rulers would order them slain at once. If your two
friends seemed of any importance, though, there is a chance that they
would have been let live for a while, prisoned there in the ruler's
building."
"Then it's for us to get them out," I said, and he laughed shortly.
"That's all," he agreed. "Well, one thing seems hardly more hopeless
than another, and we may as well try it. But we must get your friends
soon if ever, for these creatures of darkness will surely kill their
prisoners to the last one before they leave."
We stood up, then ventured cautiously into the narrow street. Looking
along its violet-lit length I could see in the broader street that
crossed it innumerable dark shapes hastening this way and that. The
buildings on each side of the streets were tall rectangular ones a few
hundred feet in height, their walls smooth and black like the paving
of the streets. They had doors but no windows whatever, seeming like
great boxes. It was with an effort that I remembered that in unending
darkness there was small need for windows.
Zat Zanat pointed out over the city to a great block-like building that
towered above all others, and on whose top I could make out the shapes
of resting space-ships.
"The building of the rulers," he whispered. "It's there your friends
are, if they still live."
"Lead on, then," I said, and without further words we started down the
narrow way.
As we came toward the broader avenue that crossed it we went more
carefully, and it was here that I had my first real glimpse of the
creatures of darkness with whom I had struggled and from whom and among
whom I had fled. They were much as my touching hands had informed me,
great upright bodies of dark flesh moving on two flap-like lower limbs
and with two similar arms. In the upper part of the body the only
features were the small opening of the mouth and great cup-like ears
set on each side of it.
As I watched, with something of a recurrence of my former horror, I
saw that the creatures seemed to judge all their movements by hearing,
avoiding one another when they heard the sound of steps, and avoiding
walls and other obstacles evidently by listening to the echo of their
own steps. The product of evolution in the unending darkness of the
cosmic cloud, hearing meant to them all that sight could mean to
children of light.
* * * * *
Zat Zanat, making a sign of caution to me, stepped forward and led the
way across the broader street, at a time when the stream of eyeless
creatures had lessened. As we approached its other side, though, the
approach of two of the monsters bearing a section of machinery between
them forced us to halt lest our steps be heard. The two passed but