Page 143 - Astounding Pulp V2

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ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
GRAY LEN SM AN 143
numbers w ill never conquer my out- ful, ceased to exist. There were im-
posts. to say nothing of my works here."
por_t~nt bursts of cosmics, but they were stricken globe shuddered, trembled, the field of a positron encountered that
"They are not fools. I am not sure-" mv1s1ble and inaudible ; and neither J alte ground itself to bits in paroxysm after of an electron, the two neutralized each
Eichmil cogitated.
nor any member of his crew were to live ghastly paroxysm of disintegration. other, giving rise to two quanta of hard
He would have been even less sure long enough to realize how terribly t hey \i\lhat was happening? Eichmil did radiation. And, since those encounters
could he have listened to a conversa- had already been burned. not know. 1-ince his ''eye'' \\'as destroyed \\'ere occurring at the rate of countless
f 1 0 .
-2 w~1ch was even then being held. Gigantic pressors shoved against it ; before any really significant develop- trill ions per second. there was tearing
QX, T horndyke?" Kinnison asked. beams of power sufficient to deflect a ments could eventuate. He and his sci-
"O n the green," came instant reply. satellite; beams whose projectors were entist~ could only speculate and deduce at the Patrol's defenses a flood of cos-
mic rays of an intensity which no space-
"Intrinsic, placement releases- eve ry- braced, in steel-laced concrete down to -:-which, with suq'!lrising accuracy, they ship had e\·er before been called upon
thing on the green !" '
bedrock, against any conceivable thrust. die!. The officers of the Patrol ships, to withstand. But the new screens had
''Cut!" and the lone p urple circle dis- But this was ne,<Jative, not p ositive, mat- however, !mew \\'hat was going on, and been figured \\'ith a factor of safety of
appeared from tank and from reducer. ter-matter negative in every respect of 1 hey were scanning with intently nar- five, and they stood up.
The master technician had cut his con- mass: inertia, and force. To it a push • rowed eyes the instruments which \\'ere The planet dwindled \\·ith SQUl-shak-
trols and every pound of metal and other was a pull. Pressors to it were tractors recording instant bv instant the per- ing rapidity to a 1110011, to a moonlet, and
substance surrounding the negasphere -at contact they pulled themselves up formance of the 1{ew cosmic super- finally to a discreetly conglomerate ag-
had been absorbed by that enigmatic off their massive foundations and hur- screens which were being assaulted so a reaation of meteorites before the mu-
volume of nothingness. No connection tled into the appalling blackness. brutally. i:, I:)
0 tual neutralization ceased.
~ con_tact with it was now possible; and
F or, as _has been said; the negasphere '·Primaries now." H aynes ordered
With its carefully established intrinsic THEN the negasphere struck. Or did was composed of negative matter. In- brisklv. as the needles of the cosmic:..ray-
velocity it rushed engulfing ly toward the it? Can nothing strike anything? It stead o( electrons, its building blocks scree; meters dropped back to the points
doomed planet. One of the mastodonic would be better, perhaps. to say t hat the were positrons-the "Dirac holes" in an of norma l functioning . The probability
fortresses which lay in its path vanished spherical hyperplane which was the infinity of negative energy. \Yhenner \\'HS that the defenses of the Boskonian
~tt7r!y, with nothing save a burst of three-dimensional cross-section of the
lllvistble cosmics to mark its passing. It negasphere began to occupy the same
approached its goal. I t was almost upon volume of space as that in which Ja lte's
th l
e P_lanet before any of the defenders unfortunate world already was. A nd at
pe~·ceived it; and ,ven then they could the surface of contact of the two the B~ thJ-i·fty~ ye't' look sp-ick.;and-spa~ ~
t
nei lier understand n or grasp it. A ll materials of both disappeared. The sub-
..
det~ctors and other warning devices re- stance of the planet vanished ; the incom- · -~ rcatecl · as '·a well-g,ro·omed mqn.
n,a111ed static. but: prehensible nothingness of the nega- ·:v&~ . ~,; . .. •. -,.., .. . , ' ~ ;·
. ''Look! There! Something's com- sphere faded away into the ordinary 011,t Tfii·n ',G'iJl~ites cast b~ut· ,e:1 , di'!le~
111g I" b
· an o server j ittered and J alte vacuity of empty space. ,, w '· , it
swung his plate. ' Jaltc's base, all the three hundre<l · · · 'hex; 1$rii.~fl Y(?U co~fort .' , .· .
Jalte saw-nothing. E ichmil saw the squa re miles of it, was taken at the first
same th ing. T here was.-f10thing to see. gulp. A vast pit opened where it had ' ,, \ ". -save you tunei'
~ vast, intangible nothing- yet a noth- been, a hole which deepened and widened
ing tangible enough to occult everythinu with horrifying rapidity. And as the "
n~a_terial in a full third of the cone of yawning abyss enlarged itself the stuff ~ '
vision! .1 alte's operators hurled inlo it of t he planet fell into it, in turn to van-
th
eir m ightiest heams. Nothing hap- ish. Mountains tumbled into it, oceans
·
pened · Th ey struck notl11ng and d is- dumped themselves into it. T he hot, ~~':;. ~ .1 .. ·' :«
·
,
appeared. T hey loosed lheir heaviest frightfuUy compressed and nascent ma- ~✓ • . , 5\;
cluodec torpedoes : gigantic missiles terial of the planet's core sought to erupt ; !
whose warheads contained enough of - but instead of moving. it, too. van-
th ~
at frightfully violent dcto11ate to dis- ished. Vast areas of the world's sur- ) '
rupt a world. N othing happened- not face crust, tens of thousands of square
even an exµlosion. Not even the faint- 111iles in extent, collapsed into it, split-
e.,_t Rash o[ light. Shell and contents ting off along crevasses of appalling
:i.hke merely and, oh, so incredibly peace- depth, and became nothing. The