They bargained to help us restore the Empire, in return for a shipload of iron.
Now it seems they intend taking a good deal more.”
His gaunt frame shuddered.
“They told me more of their history, just now, than Eric ever learned—and it’s quite a history.
They’re old, John.
Their sun is old.
Their race was old, on that ghastly planet, before our Earth was ever born.
They’re too old, John—but they don’t intend to die.
“The remarkable motion of Barnard’s Star, they tell me now, is a thing of their own accomplishment.
Because the mineral resources of their own planet were used up long ago, they’ve arranged to visit others.
In their career across the Galaxy, they live by looting the worlds they pass, and sometimes plant a colony—that’s to be the fate of Earth, they tell me.”
He shook his white head with a sick, slow motion.
“Please, John,” he whispered, “don’t think I ever intended that!”
John Star and Jay Kalam stood voiceless with shock.
The thing was unthinkable, but John Star knew it must be true.
Reason insisted that the Medusae would scarcely join an interstellar war for a single cargo of iron. And Adam Ulnar’s horrified remorse appeared sincere enough.
Dazed, John Star pictured the doom of humanity.
The System couldn’t fight a science that built these black spider-ships of space and armed them with atomic suns for weapons; a science that fortified a planet with a belt of artificial satellites, and guided a star itself like a red corsair across the Galaxy.
No, the System didn’t have a chance—not with the Legion of Space already betrayed by its own Commander’s treason, and AKKA already in the hands of the monstrous enemy.
“Please, John!”
Adam Ulnar’s broken voice was thin with a sick appeal.
“Please don’t think I intended this.
And now, if you please— I really want that little vial in my desk.”
Harshly, John Star rasped:
“You don’t deserve to die!”
“No, Commander,” Jay Kalam told him gravely.
“You must live —at least a little longer.
If we survive the landing, you may yet have a chance to help undo your treason.“
He led the stumbling prisoner back to his cell.
Rockets still roaring, the Purple Dream fell.
Intended only for the delicate maneuvering of takeoffs and landings, the rocket motors were never designed for such a task as this.
Braking the terrific velocity which had brought them safely through the radiation barrier was a job for the geodynes—but the geodynes were gone.
John Star stood rigid by the controls, fighting for the last ounce of power from the last drop of fuel; fighting to stop the cruiser in time.
The black spider-ship dropped after them.
The efficient Medusae watched—curious, no doubt, to observe the effects of their barrier rays on the wreckage of the ship.
And ready, certainly, with some new weapon, if these rash invaders did survive the landing.
Thick red mist came up about the Purple Dream.
The black flier following became a dim vast shadow in the murk.
All else was lost. And still the cruiser fell, toward the unseen world beneath the red-lit clouds.
The rockets paused in their even thunder, came back, barked in a loud back-fire—and stopped.
“The fuel is out,” John Star whispered.
“Still falling—and nothing we can do!”
Hands knotted with an agony of powerless inaction, he peered into the thick, red-lit mist ahead.
His straining eyes made out a surface— something smooth and glistening.
It flashed up to meet them.
“A sea!” he breathed.
“Going down———”
Panic choked him, but he heard Jay Kalam’s voice, soft and calm even in the last moment of their plunging fall:
“Anyhow, John, we’ve got to the planet where Aladoree is.”
15 Under the Unknown Sea