FINAL GLORY

N'Zik was a forlorn and weary figure at the forward port. He balanced his frail, bulbous body on four of his eight limbs, while the other four moved listlessly over the etheroscope, adjusting sights and lenses. N'Zik wondered dully why he bothered. Even from here he could see that the system looking ahead, the dull reddish Sun with its wild and darksome planets, was not for them.

Bitterness flooded his soul. To have come so far and searched so long, only to find this! In all this Galaxy here was the one Sun that sustained a planetary system, and that Sun was dying! The irony was more than he could bear.

Shi-Zik came to stand beside him. Only she and N'Zik were left, of all the thousands; two alone on this driving colossus which was the only world they had ever known. She sensed his bitterness now and tried to speak words of hope.

"See, N'Zik, there are inner planets! How close their orbits are! There may still be warmth and life-sustaining rays."

N'Zik's limbs sprawled outward in despair.

"This dying system is not for us, Shi-Zik. The five largest and outermost planets are but barren, frigid rock. But if you wish, we shall go inward."

His limbs flashed over the huge control-console. Gradually the ship slowed in its headlong pace. Nearly the size of a small planet, was this ship; entire generations had been born and died aboard it, during the trip between Galaxies. Somewhere deep inside, perpetual generators pounded out the power that had driven them through space faster than light.

N'Zik and Shi-Zik had never seen those generators, nor were they conscious now of the smooth threnody. They had known it always. Miles of inter-locking corridors extended behind them too, a veritable city with vast rooms of wonderful machinery—but none of this had they ever seen. For DEATH had struck suddenly there, was lurking there still.

The huge metal tomes told of it. N'Zik and Shi-Zik had read that history so often that they knew it now by heart. They knew how and why the last generations had been wiped out.

The first scientists had planned well for the safety and well-being of the generations to come, but they had overlooked one thing. Within their own Galaxy they had been cognizant of certain cosmic rays, which were harmless insofar as they had no apparent effect on living tissues. However, in that utter vacuity between Galaxies no such rays existed! And there between Galaxies new generations were born. Five, ten, a dozen generations. And at last—they had reached the new Galaxy....

Whether the cosmic rays here differed, or whether the new generations had simply lost all resistance to them, was never fully known. The race had died by thousands as the hard rays penetrated the ship. The scientists worked feverishly to build up a section with layers of their heaviest metals; but by the time they had achieved a sufficient thickness, a few dozen had survived.

N'Zik and Shi-Zik were the last of that final group.

Now, under N'Zik's sure guidance, the ship crossed the orbits of the outer planets. He had thrown over the deceleration control, but their speed was still tremendous.

In a few minutes craggy fragments of rock were skimming past their hull. The larger ones were deflected by automatic repulsion plates and the few that drifted through became molten upon contact. Such was their speed.

Then they were through the swarm, and N'Zik remarked, "This is an old system indeed. At one time a planet must have occupied that orbit."

"Look." Shi-Zik's spider-like body was taut with eagerness as she pointed to a planet far ahead, swinging away from their trajectory. "Shall we follow it?"

"There is no purpose. We can pick it up in the etheroscope." N'Zik adjusted the sights. The planet together with its two moons leaped into view on the screen. N'Zik manipulated the magnilens and it was brought still nearer.

Vast icy caps encompassed most of this world. The rest was frozen desert, slightly reddish, with a few peculiar straight-line markings that might have been man-made. But that didn't interest them now. It was all too apparent that this planet had been uninhabitable for millennia.

"Dead. A frozen, dead world," Shi-Zik intoned. "Let us go on to the next one."

They moved ever inward. The next planet with its single satellite offered no more promise. Here they saw stark mountain ranges in contrast to vast hollows that might have been dead ocean bottoms. The magnilens picked out several cities, tottering, crumbling in ruin.

"Cities," N'Zik muttered. "Cities still standing on this airless world. A civilization once existed here, and it cannot have been so long ago. Shall we go on, Shi-Zik? There are two or three other planets but I fear they will offer no more than this."

Now something of N'Zik's despair came upon Shi-Zik. "No, we need not go on. I feel weary of it all. I care not if we ever find the place we seek."

"I too, have had this feeling," N'Zik waved his limbs in agreement. "Shi-Zik, we have searched this Galaxy through. There may yet be life-giving Suns with planets, but we have not much time. Of late I have felt the engines becoming sluggish of power...."

"True. The way has been long." She gestured hopelessly. "Do you suggest then, that we put an end to the mission?"

"Not without your consent, Shi-Zik."

"I have wanted to end it!" Shi-Zik cried. "For a very long time I have thought of it, but dared not speak."

"And yet," N'Zik mused, "perhaps we should search further. Search until the end. It was the will of our forebears that the race be continued. Should we end so ingloriously what they set out to achieve?"

"The will of our forebears is as nothing to the will of Praav," Shi-Zik spoke softly, gazing out to the stars. "Praav has watched safely over us all this time. If He had wanted us to find a place, we should have found it. And we need not end ingloriously. Observe, N'Zik, that we, the last of our kind, have ended here, at what is probably the last planetary system. Its sun is dying as our race is dying. Let us all go out in a final flame together, a blaze of glory!"

The bitterness had left N'Zik now. "You are right, my dear. It was meant that we should end here. I believe Praav has willed it so!"

He threw the controls over to full acceleration and locked them into place. The colossus of all spaceships piled acceleration upon acceleration with the speed of light, plunging on its unerring course toward the dying Sun. The two beings from another Galaxy stood at the forward port, proudly side by side. N'Zik looked at Shi-Zik and felt such a peace as he had never known.

And Shi-Zik murmured, "Praav, in his inscrutable wisdom...."

Curt Sanders climbed wearily up the last steep passage from the city below. Space-suited and helmeted, he emerged from the low line of cliffs and looked out upon the desolate surface of Mercury.

For the past week he had worked hard in the underground laboratories. Occasionally he came to the surface where he could see the dark sky, and the pin-points of stars, and the dying Sun once more. That alone gave him incentive to go on. He, with the several thousand others, were working out the problem which might save them from extinction. It was slow work, damnably slow and hard, and Curt knew in his heart they would not be in time.

He raised his face to the red orb whose heat scarcely touched here. Again he marvelled that disaster had come so suddenly. Solar radiation was not supposed to end like that! It should have gone on for millennia. That's what the scientists had preached. But it had ended—scarcely five hundred years ago. Curt had never known Earth, only the city here far within Mercury, where there was meager warmth and light. And now even the internal heat of Mercury was fast cooling.

Curt turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. That would be Olana. She, too, came here each week.

She stopped beside him, raised her helmeted face to Sun and stars with infinite longing. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Olana clicked on her helmet radio.

"Each time, Curt ... each time I come here I imagine the Sun has grown dimmer. Is it really only my imagination?"

"Yes. It becomes dimmer, but not perceptibly. Solar radiation is electronic, and the theory is that our Sun has merely exhausted an outer sheath of electrons. Lord knows what internal condition caused it! If it's a solid body, it may be due to certain peculiarities of the strata. The sun spots of hundreds of years ago must have been the beginning of the end."

She nodded. "How is the work coming?"

"The Traction Rays? Slowly, Olana—too slowly." Curt shook his head in weariness. "We're in the process of testing, but they are still not strong enough. It means months more of work, and we shall need hundreds! You know, if we fail on the first attempt we shall not have another chance."

"I—I still don't quite understand it," Olana was puzzled. "I know it has something to do with the orbit of Vulcan. But how can it save us?"

"It may not. It's a forlorn chance. You know of course that Vulcan's a very small planet, scarcely larger than Earth's moon. And it pursues an orbit much closer to the Sun than Mercury. If we can drive it out of its orbit with the Traction Rays, it may fall into the Sun!"

"But suppose," Olana pointed out, "it only takes up a closer orbit?"

"Exactly why we're taking no chances. We must be sure our rays are strong enough to propel it into the Sun."

"And what then?"

Curt shrugged. "After that it's anybody's guess. Professor Marston believes that such a collision will set up a combustion sufficient to release internal electronic action from the Sun's depths. And, once that is started, the Sun will blaze again."

"I see," Olana exclaimed. "Something like stirring up dying embers!"

"Yes." There was no eagerness in Curt's voice. "No doubt there are forces within the Sun sufficient to last for millennia, if they could only be released. But they must be deep within. I'm afraid nothing we do with Vulcan will be enough."

"Why, you're just a pessimist!"

Curt smiled wanly. "No, just realistic. And very tired! It's been a trying week. Come, we'd better be getting back."

"Wait." Olana stopped him. She was gazing at the blackness beyond the horizon's rim. "Curt, look."

"Meteor?" He followed her gaze. "No! I never saw a meteor like that!"

They saw a patch of light against the reddish sunglow. It wasn't extended light, it seemed to move as a bulk and with such speed as no meteor had ever attained. For half a minute they watched it become smaller—then it disappeared. Curt shook his head in puzzlement.

They saw a patch of light against the reddish sunglow.

"That beats me! For a minute I had a feeling—yes, I was right! It went straight into the Sun! Olana—!"

But she had seen, too. She was scarcely aware of Curt's fierce grip on her arm.

Directly in the center of the maroon Sun a tiny pinpoint of white had appeared. Even as they watched, it seemed to mushroom slowly outward.

"That was no meteor!" Curt exclaimed. "Whatever caused that explosion was travelling at the speed of light, and must have had tremendous bulk! Why ... I doubt if even Vulcan striking with its orbital velocity could cause such a display!"

For an hour they watched. At the end of that time the whitish glow had given no sign of receding; if anything, it had become ever so slightly larger. They stared, entranced with a new hope.

At last Olana placed a hand on Curt's arm and murmured, "God, in his inscrutable wisdom...."