The frightful blast of energy that issued from one vent in the Cometoid’s broad side engulfed York’s ship and rammed it a mile backward. It should have blasted it to atom-debris. Chard turned a greenish white, for the little ship stopped, darted gracefully upward, and came back fully as fast as it had been flung away.
“Naturally, Chard, I was prepared for that,” came York’s unruffled voice. “Out in interstellar space, my screens have withstood forces far greater than those you’ve just released.—Want to try again? But I warn you”—here for the first time the voice became a little ugly—“you will die sooner that way!”
Chard screamed a series of orders to his crew. The men, unknowing of anything going on outside their respective cells, obeyed with trained alacrity, thinking, if they thought at all, that perhaps the Space Patrol had attacked and needed a lesson.
All hell burst-forth from the giant ship hovering over Earth. Some of its tremendous thunderbolts of destruction crashed down upon Earth’s surface and gouged it horribly, killing many. But the ship at which the hell borne fury was directed continued to gleam in the starlight. It was no longer buffeted by the flaming energies that pounded at its protective screen. York had fastened a force-beam to the center of the ship. Now he began to swing in an arc, swifter and swifter, until he was revolving about the great ship, held tight by the force-beam.
York knew the ship, knew that its blind spot was in this path. None of the world-destroying forces could touch him here. He was able to open his defensive screen, which did not allow offensive rays to be given out, and retaliate at last. First he dragged the great ship along until it was no longer over Sol City. Then a faintly shimmering violet beam, representing the accumulation of a vast amount of cosmic rays, bit viciously into the hull. As York revolved, it neatly sliced the great ship in two, like a knife cutting a sausage.
Mason Chard, as he sensed what had occurred, became a madman. But the sudden sensation of falling jerked his mind, as great fears can at such times. He died the many deaths he had escaped in his many lifetimes as the ship fell, and knew at last that his immortality was ended…
The two halves of the mighty ship crashed with a sound that could be heard miles away in Sol City. It was the signal for rejoicing.
As their ship sped away from the Solar System, fully stocked for the super trek in galactic space, Vera sighed.
“It has been so diverting, so interesting, Tony! I hate to leave. It was a cross-section of the great drama of intelligence pitting itself against the blind, immutable forces of the Universe, to carve out for itself a lasting dominion. For the lone, fearful ape-man, treading cautiously the threatening jungles of his origin to the bold daring man who placed foot on the last of nine far-flung worlds!”
York nodded. His eyes were misty as he scanned the infinite ahead.
“Yet it is all so petty, so small. There is a more supreme drama for us to witness out there. The sublime evolutions of suns and nebulae and the meta-galaxy itself. The riddle of eternity and infinity!”
Already their mental perspective had begun expanding to include the grandeur ahead. Earth and the Solar System receded to a sub-atomic mote in the incredible vastness of the void. A god and his mate were swallowed in its endless depths.
THE THREE ETERNALS
1
On Mount Olympus, as all know who have read Greek mythology, live the gods. Jove, Mercury, Apollo, Bacchus, Neptune—their names are legion.
But there are not many gods, in a riotous confusion. There are but three. Immortal, and wise with the passing of time, these Three Eternals have looked over Earth and its folk at times, sometimes amused, sometimes angered, most often unconcerned.
They looked out upon the world of the Forty-first Century and were again unconcerned, though its inhabitants were doomed, unknown to themselves.
“Ah, these mortals and their absurd little civilization!” said one. “It is about time they and all they represent go into limbo—at our hand.”
“It is dull waiting,” yawned the second. “I wish—I actually wish—they knew of it, and challenged us. I would even wish a champion to appear for them. Anton York, for instance, who was greatest of them all.”
“Anton York!” The third laughed. “He is far out in space. And if he were here, what could he do against us? Nothing!”
They smiled at one another, secure in that knowledge, and went back to their intricate game of four-dimensional chess, developed to help pass the slow crawl of time in their immortal lives…
Out in the vast, uncharted depths of interstellar space, a small globular ship plunged Earthward at a speed greater than light.
Within it, Anton York and his immortal mate grew hourly more eager. They were returning for a visit to the world of their birth, after a long absence. Like gods they had gone where they willed, viewing strange worlds, queer civilizations, taking deep pleasure in watching part of the majestic sweep of cosmic history.
Earth’s individual history had faded in their minds, overlaid by countless other events, but now nostalgia tingled through their veins. Near-gods they might be, but even gods must have a place called “home.”
“I can hardly wait to get back!” said Vera York, with all the enthusiasm of an American waiting to see the Statue of Liberty after a year in Europe. “Why have we stayed away so long Tony?”
“How long has it been?” Anton York asked, vaguely.
“A thousand years!” Vera had checked the time-charts, amazed herself.
“That long?” York shook his head. “Time does fly, as an old proverb says. Yet, what is time to us? We will live, Vera, till half the Universe has run down into cosmic rays. Millions of years, at the least!”
It was bare truth. They were thirty-five years old—in appearance. In their bloodstreams flowed an elixir of self-renewing enzymes that constantly rebuilt radiogens, the tiny batteries of cell life. The boundless energy of all-pervading cosmic rays fed these radiogens, supplying the undying fires of youth to their bodies. Old age and disease could not touch them. The finger of Death could only mark them by violent means, if Fate so willed.
Vera shivered slightly.
“Millions of years!” she echoed. “Sometimes it isn’t good to think of that.” Her eyes, a little haunted, sparkled suddenly. “The first thing I’m going to do, when we arrive on Earth, is to take a swim in some cool mountain lake, surrounded by green trees. There will be birds singing, and soft warm breezes whispering through the leaves, and white clouds sailing on high—” She choked a little “Oh, Tony, I’m just beginning to realize how much I miss those simple things!”
York nodded. In all their galactic roaming, there had been no world quite like Earth. No spot in the Universe quite so dear in their memories.
“We’ll undoubtedly find a great civilization there on Earth,” mused York, more practical-minded. “When we left, in the Thirty-first Century, mankind was already beginning to make the most of its nine-world empire. We’ll find humanity in its happiest and mightiest phase since the first dawn man built the first fire and found that Nature could be his ally. Mankind deserves it too, Vera, for all of its previous bickerings, maladjustments, and crimes against itself. Civilization went through its adolescence in the Twentieth Century, when we were born. Now it must be approaching maturity.”
His eyes shone as he went on.
“And, fully matured, mankind will one day inherit the stars! It will be destined to replace so many of the worn-out, decadent civilizations that fell by the wayside throughout the cosmos. But only when they are ready for it. As we have done in advance, the ships of Earthmen will seek far worlds and—”