We want to know what it is—and how to get through it alive.”
The fine wrinkles bit deeper into Adam Dinar’s face, and all the cheerful color had ebbed from it.
The pupils of his blue eyes were black and big with a sick dismay.
“I don’t know what it is.”
His voice was slow and dull with fear.
“I don’t know.”
“You must!”
John Star’s voice was a brittle challenge.
“You had the full reports, uncensored.
Eric must have told you all about it.
Let’s have it!”
Heavily, the old Commander shook his head.
“Eric didn’t know,” he said.
“Even after the Medusae had made their agreement to help us, in return for a cargo of iron, they wouldn’t tell him anything about it.
All I know is what it did to the ships of his expedition when they first tried to land.”
“And what was that?”
“Enough,” Adam Ulnar said.
“His fleet approached the barrier zone without any warning of danger, you see—fortunately Eric had been smart enough to bring his flagship to the rear.
Only the two lead vessels got into the zone.
They never came out.
“What the barrier force is, his engineer couldn’t discover.
They believed that it is radiant energy—if so, however, it is something different hi effect from any gamma or cosmic radiation known to us.
The crews of those two unfortunate ships had no time to signal any reports.
The ships fell, out of control.
Observers on the other vessels reported that they seemed to be disintegrating—falling apart.
Later, a few meteor-like streaks were observed in the planet’s upper atmosphere. And that was all.
“Eric kept the rest of his fleet outside the barrier, until he had established radio and television communication with the Medusae— which took a considerable time.
Afterwards, they allowed several of his ships to visit the planet and leave it again—apparently they can open the barrier, at will.”
John Star eyed him sharply.
“What else do you know?” he demanded.
“The men who landed must have learned something about it?”
The old man clinging to the bars forced a sick, yellow smile.
“The most of them could never tell what they learned.”
His dull voice held an echo of dread.
“They’re the ones who came back to die hi the mental wards—if they came back at all.
You see, there’s something in the planet’s atmosphere that isn’t good for the flesh or the minds of men.
A virus, a secondary radiation excited by the barrier rays, or perhaps a toxic emanation from the bodies of the Medusae themselves—those stricken scientists could never agree on what it was.
But they did prove that men can’t go there and live.
The effects are extremely variable, and sometimes long delayed.
But the onset, when it comes, is sudden and terrible.”
“Thank you, Commander,” Jay Kalam said, and they turned away.
“Wait!” The shaken voice called after them.
“You aren’t going on —not into the Belt?”
“We’re running through it,” John Star assured him.
“We shall try,” added Jay Kalam, “to get through it at a very high speed.
By surprise.
Before those radiations—if that is what they are —have time to take effect.”
Holding himself upright, with his white and trembling hands on the bars, old Adam Ulnar looked at both their faces.
His pale lips twitched.
Bowed, now, his shoulders made a weary little shrug, and he finally spoke.