“A machine!”
Even now, Lilith’s tight and breathless voice seemed curiously calm.
“One men never made!”
“A fearful machine!” whispered old Habibula.
“A monstrous machine.
I’m not sure I like it!”
If its hugeness was dazing, its shape overwhelmed me.
Parts projected out of it, but I could not call them masts or tentacles or towers—they fitted no familiar pattern.
Their shadows, greenish black upon the screen, veiled whatever they projected from.
“If machines are designed to do things—” Though I was fighting for control, my voice came out hoarse and shaken.
“What is this one for?”
“For nothing good,” old Habibula whimpered.
“You can see its makers mean us fearful evil!”
“How is that, Giles?” Lilith’s voice was breathlessly intent.
“What can you tell about it?”
“Too mortal much!”
Clutching that cold rail, he shuddered apprehensively.
“We can tell that it was built to propel itself through space, even in this fearful anomaly.
We can tell that it was built to attack and pursue other spacecraft.
We can tell that its unknown weapons were too much for poor Ken Star’s Quasar Quest.
We can tell more, as we watch it work.
“For life’s sweet sake—look at that!”
His voice sank into a shivering moan.
Watching the screen, we saw the machine dart closer to that dying star.
We saw a long projection, neither arm nor crane nor cable, extend itself to seize the star.
The star was covered, dimmed, extinguished.
The whole screen went greenish-black.
“What happened?” Lilith whispered sharply.
“Where did it go?”
“Space is mortal dark out here,” old Habibula gasped.
“With the nearest star thirty trillion miles away.
Since the wicked thing put out the light, it’s black as space itself.
But at least we saw it work.”
“What do you make of that, Giles?”
“Trouble!” he moaned.
“Fearful trouble.”
With nothing more to see, we left the dome.
I escorted Lilith and Habibula back to the full-G ring, and then made a careful tour of the duty posts.
I found the men dangerously restive.
The unknown light had been put out.
The enemy machine had vanished from our instruments.
No new message had come from Commander Star.
Only the great electronic chart on the end of the control drum showed the anomaly still growing—that black-bellied creature fatter, its purple legs reaching farther, its bright magnetic web spreading around and beyond us.
Without the chart, the anomaly was still invisible—perhaps that was the most dreadful thing about it.
Only our computed drift revealed the intense gravitic forces dragging us deeper into that deadly web in spite of the thrust of our rockets.
The whole station was hushed and breathless with a sense of unseen menace closing in, so intangibly strange that we could not shield ourselves against it.
The strain of waiting—waiting for a shape of danger that we could not even imagine—was harder to endure even than the seen threat of that dark machine.
My next long watch had come and gone, when Commander Star reached the station.
He came in the smaller escape capsule from the Quasar Quest, with only two men of his crew.
To avoid detection, they had drifted all the way with dead rockets, keeping radio and laser silence.