The Black Star Passes John W. Campbell (good novels to read in english TXT) š
- Author: John W. Campbell
Book online Ā«The Black Star Passes John W. Campbell (good novels to read in english TXT) šĀ». Author John W. Campbell
āSounds fairly logical.ā Wade agreed. āBut now I have a question for you. Where under the sun did these beings come from?ā
Arcotās reply came slowly. āIāve been wondering the same thing. And the more I wonder, the less I believe they did come fromā āunder our sun. Letās eliminate all the solar planetsā āwe can do that at one fell swoop. Itās perfectly obvious that those ships are by no means the first crude attempts of this race to fly through space. Weāre dealing with an advanced technology. If they have had those ships even as far away as Pluto, we should certainly have heard from them by now.
āHence, weāve got to go out into interstellar space. Youāll probably want to ram some of my arguments down my throatā āI know there is no star near enough for the journey to be made in anything less than a couple of generations by all thatās logical; and theyād freeze in the interstellar cold doing it. There is no known star close enoughā ābut how about unknowns?ā
āWhat have they been doing with the star?ā Morey snorted. āHiding it behind a sunshade?ā
Arcot grinned. āYes. A shade of old age. You know a sun canāt radiate forever; eventually they die. And a dead sun would be quite black, Iām sure.ā
āAnd the planets that circle about them are apt to become a wee bit cool too, you know.ā
āAgreed,ā said Arcot, āand we wouldnāt be able to do much about it. But give these beings credit for a little higher order of intelligence. We saw machines in that space ship that certainly are beyond us! They are undoubtedly heating their planets with the same source of energy with which they are running their ships.
āI believe I have confirmation of that statement in two things. They are absolutely colorless; they donāt even have an opaque white skin. Any living creature exposed to the rays of a sun, which is certain to emit some chemical rays, is subject to coloration as a protection against those rays. The whites, who have always lived where sunlight is weakest, have developed a skin only slightly opaque. The Orientals, who live in more tropical countries, where less clothes and more sun is the motto, have slightly darker skins. In the extreme tropics nature has found it necessary to use a regular blanket of color to stop the rays. Now extrapolating the other way, were there no such rays, the people would become a pigmentless race. Since most proteins are rather translucent, at least when wet, they would appear much as these beings do. Remember, there are very few colored proteins. Hemoglobin, such as in our blood, and hemocyanin, like that in the blue blood of the Venerians, are practically unique in that respect. For hydrogen absorption, I imagine the blood of these creatures contains a fair proportion of some highly saturated compound, which readily takes on the element, and gives it up later.
āBut we can kick this around some more in the lab.ā
Before starting for New York, Arcot had convinced the officer in charge that it would be wise to destroy the more complete of the invadersā ships at once, lest one of them manage to escape. The fact that none of them had any rays in operation was easily explained; they would have been destroyed by the Patrol if they had made any show of weapons. But they might be getting some ready, to be used in possible escape attempts. The scientists were through with their preliminary investigations. And the dismembered sections would remain for study, anyway.
The ships had finally been rayed apart, and when the three had left, their burning atmosphere had been sending mighty tongues of flame a mile or more into the air. The light gas of the alien atmosphere tended to rise in a great globular cloud, a ball that quickly burned itself out. It had not taken long for the last of the machines to disintegrate under the rays. There would be no more trouble from them, at any rate!
Now Morey asked Arcot if he thought that they had learned all they could from the ships; would it not have been wiser to save them, and investigate more fully later, taking a chance on stopping any sudden attack by surviving marauders by keeping a patrol of Air Guards there.
To which Arcot replied, āI thought quite a bit before I suggested their destruction, and I conferred for a few moments with Forsyth, whoās just about tops in biology and bacteriology. He said that they had by no means learned as much as they wished to, but theyād been forced to leave in any event. Remember that pure hydrogen, the atmosphere we were actually living in while on the ship, is quite as inert as pure oxygenā āwhen alone. But the two get very rough when mixed together. The longer those ships lay there the more dangerously explosive they became. If we hadnāt destroyed them, they would have wrecked themselves. I still think we followed the only logical course.
āDr. Forsyth mentioned the danger of disease. Thereās a remote possibility that we might be susceptible to their germs. I donāt believe we would be, for our chemical constitution is so vastly different. For instance, the Venerians and Terrestrians can visit each other with perfect freedom. The Venerians have diseases, and so do we, of course; but there are things in the blood of Venerians that are absolutely deadly to any Terrestrian organism. We have a similar deadly effect on Venerian germs. It isnāt immunityā āitās simply that our respective constitutions are so different that we donāt need immunity. Similarly, Forsyth thinks we would be completely resistant to all diseases brought by the invaders. However, itās safer to remove the danger, if any, first, and check afterward.ā
The three men sped rapidly back to New York,
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