Edmond Hamilton - The Sun Smasher
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THE SUN SMASHER
By
EDMOND HAMILTON
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-58873-914-7
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1959, renewed Estate of Edmond Hamilton
Reprinted by permission Spectrum Literary Agency
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
For information contact:
publisher@renebooks.com
PageTurner Editions/Futures-Past Science Fiction
CHAPTER 1
YOU WERE a real person, a normal individual. You lived a real life, in a real world. And then in one
day, in a few hours of one day, it all fell away around you like a structure of thin paper crumbling in the
rain, and you found that you had stepped right out of it into an abyss as wide and dark as the cosmos,
without beginning, without end, without one solid truth to cling to.
That was the way it seemed to Neil Banning. He was thirty-one-years old, he was a New York
publisher's salesman, he was healthy, well-adjusted, and he liked his job. He ate three meals a day,
worried about his income tax, and thought occasionally about getting married. He had a past, and a
future. But that was before he went to Greenville.
It was pure chance. A sales trip to the West Coast, the realization on the train that he was only a hundred
miles from his boyhood home, and a sudden sentimental decision. Three hours later, in bright spring
sunshine, he debarked in the little Nebraska town.
He looked up at the blue prairie sky with the cloud flecks in it, and he looked along the wide, unbusy
main street. He smiled. It hadn't changed too much. Towns like Greenville are timeless.
There was one taxi-cab at the station. The driver, a long-jawed young man with a nondescript cap on the
back of his head, put Banning's bags in the cab and said, “Excelsior Hotel, mister? It's the best one,"
Banning said, “Just take the bags there. I'll walk."
The young man looked at him. “Cost you fifty cents anyway. Might as well ride."
Banning paid him. “I'll still walk.'
"It's your money, mister,” said the young man. He drove off, and Banning started along the street with the
fresh prairie wind whipping his topcoat around his legs.
The feed store, the lumber company, the old Horton hardware, Del Parker's barbershop. The Court
House, set squat and dumpy in its square. The Dairy Lunch had a new sign featuring a colossal
triple-deck ice-cream cone, and the Hiway Garage was bigger now, with a side lot full of farm
implements.
He walked slowly, taking his time. The people he passed looked at him with the open, friendly curiosity
of the Middle West, and he looked at them, but he didn't know any of them. After all, ten years was a
long time to be away. Still, there ought to be at least one familiar face to welcome him home. Ten years
wasn't that long.
He turned right at the old bank building and went down Hollins Street. Two long straggling blocks. The
house, anyway, should still be standing.
It wasn't.
Banning stopped. He looked up and down the street. No mistake. This was the place, and the houses on
either side were exactly as he remembered them, but where his uncle's house had stood was nothing now
but weeds.
"Burned down,” he thought. “Or been moved to another lot, maybe."
But he felt uneasily that there was something wrong about it. A house isn't easily erased from the surface
of the earth. There's always something—a rubble-heap where the cellar was filled in, the outline of the
foundation, a trace of the old walks, the trees and garden beds.
There was nothing here, nothing but a weedy vacant lot. That didn't seem right at all. He felt
disappointed—the house you had grown up in was like a part of you, the focal point of your whole
childhood, too full of memories to be easily lost. But he was puzzled, too, and oddly worried.
"The Greggs would know,” be thought, and went on to the next house and up onto its porch. “If they still
live here."
His knock was answered by an old man he didn't know, a pink-faced cheery little gnome who came
around from the back yard with a garden hoe in his hands. He didn't mind talking. But he couldn't seem
to understand Banning's questions at all. He kept shaking his head, and finally he said, “You've got the
wrong street, young fellow. Never was any Jesse Banning lived around here.
"It was ten years ago,” Banning explained. “Maybe before you came here—"
The old man stopped smiling. “Listen, I'm Martin Wallace. I've lived in this house forty-two years. You
ask anybody. And I never heard of any Bannings. Furthermore, there's never been any house on that
vacant lot. I know. I own it."
The first touch of real fright slid over Banning. “But I lived in a house on that lot! I lived in it for years
when I was a boy. It belonged to my uncle. You weren't here then, the Greggs lived here, they had a
daughter with two yellow pigtails, and a boy named Sam. I used to play—"
"See here,” said the old man. All his friendliness was gone, he looked a little angry and a little alarmed. “If
this is a joke, it ain't funny. If it ain't a joke, you're drunk or crazy. You get out of here!"
Banning stared at him. He didn't move. “Please,” he said. “That apple tree, at the foot of your lot—I fell
out of it when I was eight years old and broke my wrist. You don't forget things like that."
The old man dropped his hoe, and backed into his house. “If you ain't off my place in two seconds,” he
said, “I'm going to call the police.” He slammed the door, and bolted it.
Banning glared at the door, furious himself now because that faint edge of fear had sharpened and was
beginning to cut into him. Deep.
"Crazy,” he muttered. “Must be senile.” He looked again at the vacant lot, then at the big brick house
across the street. He started toward it. He remembered that house very well, and the people who had
lived in it. Their name was Lewis, and they had had a daughter too, and he had taken her to dances, and
picnics, and on hayrides. If they still lived here they would know what had happened.
"Lewises?” said the large, red-faced woman who answered his ring. “No, no Lewises here."
"Ten years ago,” he said desperately. “They were here then, and the Bannings lived where that vacant lot
is."
She stared. “I've lived here sixteen years myself, and before that I lived in that grey house three doors
down. I was born there. There were never any Lewises here or any Bannings either. And there wasn't
ever any house on that vacant lot."
She didn't say any more. Neither did Banning. He watched the door close. He lifted his hand to pound
on it, to break it down and get hold of the red-faced woman and make her explain who was crazy, or
lying, or what. Then he thought, this is ridiculous, letting them get me upset. There must be an explanation,
some reason for it. Maybe a property deal, maybe they're afraid I have some claim on my uncle's old
place. Maybe that's why they're lying to me, trying to make me believe I'm mistaken.
There was one place to find out for sure. One place where there was no chance of anybody lying. He
walked back, fast, to the main street, and up to the Court House.
He told the girl clerk what he wanted, and waited while she checked the records. She was not in any
hurry about it. Banning smoked nervously. He was sweating, and his hands shook a little.
The girl came back with a slip of paper. She seemed rather annoyed with him. “There's never been any
house at 344 Hollins,” she said. “Here's the record. The property—"
Banning grabbed the paper out of her hands. It said that Martin W. Wallace had purchased a house and
lot at 346 Hollins, together with the unimproved lot adjoining it, legal description as follows, from a
Walter Bergstrander in 1912. The lot was still unimproved.
Banning stopped sweating. He got cold. “Listen,” he said to the girl. “Look up these names in Vital
Statistics.” He scribbled them down for her. “In the death records, Jesse Banning and Ila Roberts
Banning.” He scribbled dates beside each one.
The girl took the list and flounced away with it. She was gone a long time. When she came back, she was
no longer annoyed. She was angry.
"Are you trying to be funny or something?” she demanded. “Wasting a person's time like this! There's no
record of any of those people.” She slammed the list down in front of Banning and turned away.
The wicket gate was just beside him. He pushed it open and went in. “Look again,” he said. “Please.
They're there. They have to be there."
"You're not allowed in here,” she told him, edging away. “What's the matter with you? I told you they're
not—"
He caught her arm. “Show me the books then. I'll look for myself."
She yelled and pulled away. He let her go, and she ran out of the office and down the hall, calling, “Mr.
Harkness! Mr. Harkness!"
Banning, in the record room, looked helplessly at the tall shelves of heavy ledgers. He didn't understand
the markings on them, he wanted to tear them all down and search them till he found the proofs that must
be there, the proofs that he wasn't crazy or lying. But where to start?
He didn't start. There was a heavy footstep, and a hand on his shoulder. It was a beefy, unperturbed man
with a cigar in his mouth. He took the cigar out and said, “Now young fellow, what are you creating a
disturbance about?"
Banning began angrily, “Listen, whoever you are—"
"Harkness,” said the beefy man. “I'm Roy Harkness, and I'm Sheriff of this county. You'd better come
along to my office."
Hours later, Banning sat in the Sheriff's office and finished telling his story for the third time.
"It's a conspiracy,” be said wearily. “I don't know what it's all about, but you're all in on it."
Neither the Sheriff, nor his deputy, nor the reporter and photographer from the Greenville newspaper,
laughed outright. But he could see the grins they didn't quite suppress.
'You're charging,” said the Sheriff, “that the whole city of Greenville has got together and deliberately
falsified the records. That's a serious charge. And what reason would we have?"
Banning felt sick. He knew he was sane, and yet the world had suddenly ceased to make sense. “That's
what I can't figure out. Why? Why would you people want to take my past away?” He shook his head.
“I don't know. But I know that that old Mr. Wallace was lying. Maybe he's behind this."
"Only trouble is,” said the sheriff, “that I've known the old man all my life. I can tell you for certain that
he's owned that lot for forty-two years and there's never been so much as a hencoop on it."
Banning said, “Then I'm lying about this? But why would I?"
The Sheriff shrugged. “Could be build-up for some kind of extortion scheme. Could be a cute gag
because you want publicity for some reason. And could be, you're nuts."
Banning got up, rage flaring in him. “So that's it—frame this up and then tell me I'm crazy. Well. we'll see.
He started toward the door. The Sheriff made a gesture. The photographer got a fine action shot as the
deputy grabbed Banning and hustled him expertly into the jail-wing beyond the office, and into a cell.
"Psycho,” said the reporter, staring at Banning through the bars. “You can't tell by looking at them, can
you?"
Banning looked stupidly back through the bars at them, unable to believe that this was happening. “A
frame-up—” he said thickly.
"No frame-up at all, son,” the Sheriff said. “You come in and make a disturbance, you charge a lot of
people with conspiracy—well, you got to stay here till we check up on you.” He turned to his deputy.
“Better wire to that New York publisher he says he works for. Give them a general description—six feet
tall, black hair, black eyes, and so on, just in case."
He went away, and so did the deputy and the reporter and photographer. Banning was alone in the
cell-wing.
He sat down and put his head between his bands. Bright sunlight poured through the high barred
window, but as far as Banning was concerned it was midnight, and the darkest he had ever known.
If only he had not decided to visit the old home town. But he had. And now he was faced with questions.
Who was lying, who was crazy? He could not find any answers.
Evening came. They brought him food, and he asked about arranging bail, but he could get no definite
answer. The Sheriff was out. He demanded a lawyer, and was told not to worry. He sat down again, and
waited. And worried.
For lack of anything else to do, he went over the years of his life, starting from the first thing he could
remember. They were all there. There were gaps and vague spots, of course, but everybody had
those—the countless days in a lifetime when nothing much happened. But the main facts remained. He
was Neil Banning, and he had spent a lot of his life in Greenville, in a house that everyone said had never
existed.
In the morning, Harkness came in and spoke to him. “I heard from New York,” he said. “You're all clear
on that angle."
He studied Banning through the bars. “Look, you seem a decent enough young fellow. Why don't you tell
me what this is all about?"
"I wish I could,” said Banning grimly. Harkness sighed. “Pete's right, you can't tell by looking at them. I'm
afraid we have to hold you for a psychiatric."
"A what?"
"Listen, I've combed this town and its records. There just never were any Bannings here. There weren't
even any Greggs. And the only Lewises I could find, five on a farm twenty miles from here and they
never heard of you.” He spread his hands. “What am I suppose to think?"
Banning turned his back. “You're lying,” he said. “Get out."
"Okay.” Harkness tossed something through the bars. “This might interest you, anyway.” He went off
down the corridor. After a while Banning picked the thing up. It was the local newspaper of the previous
evening. It had a good story, the nut from New York accusing a little Nebraska town of stealing away his
past. It was a story so droll that Banning knew it would surely be on all the wire services.
Banning read it three times. He began to think that soon he really would need a psychiatrist, and probably
a straitjacket, too.
Just before sundown the deputy came in and said, “You've got a visitor.'
Banning sprang up. Someone must have remembered him, someone who would prove that be was telling
the truth.
But the man who came down the corridor was a stranger, a dark, hard, massive man of middle years,
who wore his clothes with a curious awkwardness. He strode up to the cell door, walking lightly for all
his bulk. He looked at Banning, and his eyes were very dark, very intense.
His bleak, square face did not change expression. Yet a subtle change did come over this massive man
as he stared. He had the look of a man who has waited and endured for ages, a grim and somber man of
stone who at last sees that for which be waited.
"The Valkar,” he said softly, not to Banning only, but to himself, his voice leaping with a harsh throb.
“Kyle Valkar. It's been a long time, but I've found you."
Banning stared. “What did you call me? And who are you? I never saw you before."
"Didn't you?” said the stranger. “But you did. I'm Rolf. And you're the Valkar. And the bitter years are
over."
Quite unexpectedly, he reached through the bars and took Banning's right hand, and set it against his own
bowed forehead, in a gesture of obeisance.
CHAPTER II
FOR A MOMENT, too shocked even to move, Banning stared at the stranger. Then he caught his hand
away.
"What are you doing?” he demanded, drawing back. “What is this? I don't know you. And I'm
not—whatever name you called me. I'm Neil Banning."
The stranger smiled. In his dark, ruthless face there was something that frightened Banning more than
open enmity would have done. It was affection, such as a man might have for a son, or younger brother.
Deep affection, mingled oddly with respect.
"Neil Banning,” said the man who called himself Rolf. “Yes. It was the story of Neil Banning in the
newspapers that led me here. You are a small sensation now, the man who was robbed of his past. He
laughed softly. “It's a pity they can't know the truth."
A wild surge of hope went through Banning. “Then you do know it? You can tell me—you can tell them
why this has been done?"
"I can tell you,” said Rolf, emphasizing the pronoun. “But not here, not now. Be patient a few more
hours. I'll get you out of here tonight."
"If yon can arrange bail for me, I'll be grateful,” Banning said. “But I don't understand why you're doing
this.” He looked searchingly at Rolf. “Perhaps: I should remember you. Did you know me as a child-?"
"Yes,” said Rolf. “I knew you as a child—and as a man. But you could not remember me.” A black look
of anger crossed his face, and he said savagely, “The swine. Of all the evils they could have done you,
this exile from the mind is—” He caught himself. “No. They might have done worse. They might have
killed you."
Banning gaped. People whirled through his mind, old Wallace, Harkness, the red-faced woman. “Who
might have killed me?"
Rolf said two names, very softly. They were strange names. “Tharanya.” And another. “Jommor."
He watched Banning closely.
Suddenly Banning understood. He backed well away from the door. “You,” he said, “are crazy as a
hatter.” He was glad there were bars between them.
Rolf grinned. “It's natural you should think so—just as the good Sheriff thinks it of you. Don't be too hard
on him, Kyle, it isn't his fault. He's quite right, you see. Neil Banning never existed."
He bent his bead in a curiously proud little bow, and turned away. “You will be free tonight. Trust me,
even if you do not understand."
He was gone before Banning could think to yell for the deputy. Banning sat down on the bunk, utterly
dejected. For a moment he had hoped, for a moment he had been sure that the big dark man knew the
truth and could help him. It was that much harder to realize his mistake.
"I suppose,” he thought bitterly, “that every lunatic in the country will start calling me brother."
He didn't hear anything that evening about bail being arranged for him. He had not expected to.
Banning picked at the dinner they brought him. He was tired, in a sullen, ugly mood. He stretched out on
the bunk, thinking the hell with them, thinking of the pleasure he would have in suing them all for false
arrest. After a while he fell into an uneasy sleep.
The cold, iron sound of his cell door opening brought him up, wide awake. It was night now, and only the
corridor lights were on. The big dark man stood in the open door, smiling.
"Come,” he said. “The way is clear."
Banning said, “How did you get in here? How did you get those keys?'
He looked past the dark man, to the end of the corridor. The deputy was leaning forward across his
desk with his head on the blotter. One arm hung down, relaxed and boneless.
Banning cried out with sudden horror, “My God, what have you done, what have you got me into?” He
flung himself on the cell door, trying to shut it again, to force the stranger out. “Get out, I won't have
anything to do with it.” He began to yell.
With an expression of regret, Rolf opened his left hand to reveal a small egg-shaped thing of metal, with a
lens in one end. He said, “Forgive me, Kyle. There's no time now to explain."
A brief pale flicker came out of the lens. Banning felt no pain, only a mild shock and then a dissolution as
black and still as death. He did not even feel Rolf's arms catch him as he fell.
When he woke again he was in a car. He was in the back seat, and Rolf was beside him, sitting so that
he could watch him. The car was going very fast along a prairie road, and it was still night. The driver
was no more than a shadow against the dim glow of the dashboard lights, and outside there was only a
vast darkness caught under a bowl of stars.
It was dark in the back seat, and Banning had not moved very much, nor spoken. He thought perhaps
Rolf had not seen that he was conscious again. He thought that if he threw himself forward suddenly, he
might catch the big dark man off guard.
He gathered himself, trying not to change even the rhythm of his breathing.
Rolf said, “I don't want to put you out again, Kyle. Don't make me."
Banning hesitated. He could see from the way Rolf was sitting that he was holding something in his hand.
He remembered the metal egg, and decided that he would have to wait for a better chance. He was
sorry. He would have liked to get his hands on Rolf.
"You killed that deputy,” he said. “Probably others, too. You're not only crazy, you're a killer."
With irritating patience, Rolf said, “You're not dead, are you?"
"No, but—"
"Neither is the deputy, nor anyone else. These people have no part in our affairs. It would be shameful to
kill them.” He chuckled. “Tharanya would be surprised to hear me say that. She thinks of me as a man
without a soul."
Banning sat up straight. “Who is Tharanya? What's that thing you knocked me out with? Where are you
taking me—and what the hell is this all about?” His voice rose to a high pitch of fright and fury. He was
no more than normally afraid of physical injury and death, but he had had a nerve-racking couple of days
and he was not at his best. It seemed too much to ask for him to remain calm while being pushed over
the nighted prairie at breakneck speed by a lunatic kidnapper and his accomplice.
"I suppose,” Rolf said, “it wouldn't do any good if I told you I'm your friend, your best and oldest friend,
and that you have nothing to fear.'
"No. It wouldn't."
"I didn't think so.” Rolf sighed. “And I'm afraid the answers to your questions won't help either. Jommor
did a damn good job on you—better than I'd have believed possible."
Banning took hold of the edge of the seat, trying to control himself. “And who is Jommor?"
"Tharanya's right-hand man. And Tharanya is sole and sovereign ruler of the New Empire ... and you're
Kyle Valkar, and I'm Rolf, who wiped your nose for you when you were—” He broke off, swearing in a
language Banning did not understand. “What's the use?"
"New Empire,” said Banning. ‘Delusions of grandeur. You still haven't told me what that gadget is."
"Cerebro-shocker,” said Rolf, as one says “rattle” to a baby. He began to talk to the driver in that foreign
and incomprehensible tongue, not taking his eyes off Banning. Presently there was silence again.
The road got worse. The car slowed down some, but not enough to suit Banning. After a while he
realized that there wasn't any road at all. Banning began again to measure the distance between himself
and Rolf. He also began to doubt the power of the metal egg. Cerebro-shocker, indeed. Something else
must have hit him back there in the cell, something he hadn't seen, a believable thing like a gun barrel or
brass knuckles. It was dark in there and the door had been open. The accomplice, the driver, could
easily have got in, could have been standing behind him, ready to lower the boom when Rolf signaled
him.
Ahead of them, a mile or so away across the flat prairie, there was a curious flare of light, and a great
wind struck them, and was gone.
The driver spoke, and Rolf answered, with a note of relief.
Banning let himself roll with the motion of the car. He waited till it pitched in the right direction, and then
he threw himself, fast and hard, at the big dark man.
He was wrong about the metal egg. It worked.
This time he did not go clear out. Apparently the degrees of shock could be controlled, and Rolf did not
want him unconscious—only partly so. He could still see and hear and move, though not normally and
what he saw and heard were like the impersonal shadow-shapes and unreal voices of a film, having no
connection with himself.
He saw the prairie roll on past the car, black and empty under the stars. Then he felt the car go slower
and slower until it stopped, and he heard Rolf's voice telling him gently to get out. He took Rolf's hand, as
though he were a child and Rolf his father, and let himself be helped. His body moved, but it had ceased
to be his own.
Outside there was a cold wind sweeping, and a sudden light that blotted out the stars. The light showed
the car and the prairie grass. It showed the driver, and Rolf, and himself, laying their shadows long and
black behind them. It showed a wall of metal, bright as a new mirror and straight for a hundred feet or so
horizontally, but rising vertically in a convex curve.
There were openings in the wall. Windows, ports, a door, a hatchway, who knew the right words? It
was not a wall. It was the side and flank of a ship.
Men came out of it. They wore strange clothing, and they spoke a strange tongue. They moved forward,
and Rolf and the driver and Neil Banning walked to meet them. Presently they stopped in the full glare of
the light. The strange men spoke to Rolf, and he answered them, and then Banning realized in a dim and
distant way that the men were all looking at him and that in their faces was a reverence almost
approaching superstition.
He heard them say, “The Valkar!” And as far off as he was, he felt a small, faint shiver touch him at the
fierce and hopeful and wild and half-despairing tone in which they said it.
Rolf led him toward the open hatchway of the ship. He said quietly, “You asked me where I was taking
you. Come aboard, Kyle—I'm taking you home."
CHAPTER III
THE ROOM in which Neil Banning found himself was larger and more sumptuous than the jail cell, but it
was none the less a prison. He found that out as soon as full consciousness returned to him—he had a
feeling he had passed out again, and for quite some time, but be could not be sure about this. Anyway, he
had got up and tried the doors. One led into an adjoining bath, rather oddly appointed. The other was
locked. Tight. There were no windows. The metal wall was smooth and unbroken. Light in the room
came from some overhead source he could not see.
For a few minutes he prowled uneasily, looking at things, trying to think. He remembered the weird
nightmarish dream he had had about the light on the prairie and the great silver ship. Nightmare, of
course. Some hypnotic vision induced by the dark man who called himself Rolf. Who in the devil's name
was Rolf, and why had the man picked him as the victim of his insane behavior?
A ship, in the middle of the prairie. The men in the strange clothes, who had hailed him as—what was the
name again? Valkar. A dream, of course. Vivid, but only a dream—
Or was it?
No windows. No sense of motion. No sound—yes, there was a sound, or almost one, if you let your
whole body listen for it. A deep throbbing, like the beating of a giant's heart. The air had an unfamiliar
smell.
With senses suddenly sharpened to an abnormal acuteness, Banning realized that everything in the room
was unfamiliar. The colors, the textures, the shapes, everything from the plumbing fixtures to the
furnishings of the bunk bed he had just left.
Even his own body felt unfamiliar. The weight of it had changed.
He began to pound on the door and yell.
Rolf came almost at once. The man who had driven the car was with him, and now they both carried the
egg-shaped metal things. The ex-driver bowed to Banning, but he stayed several paces behind Rolf, so
that Banning could not possibly attack or evade both of them at once. They now wore clothing such as
the men had worn in Banning's dream, a sort of tunic and closefitting leggings that looked comfortable
and functional and quite unreal.
Rolf entered the room, leaving the other man outside. Banning caught a glimpse of a narrow corridor
walled in metal like the room, and then Rolf shut the door again. Banning heard it lock.
"Where are we?” he demanded.
"At the moment,” said Rolf, “we're well out from Sol on our way to Antares. I don't think the exact
readings would mean much to you.'
Banning said, ‘I don't believe you.” He didn't. And yet, at the same time he knew, somehow, that it was
true. The knowledge was horrible, and his brain twisted and turned like a hunted rabbit to get away from
it.
Rolf walked over to the outer wall. “Kyle,” he said, “you must start to believe me. Both our lives depend
on it."
He pressed a stud somewhere in the wall, and a section of the metal slid back, revealing a port.
"This isn't really a window,” Rolf said. “It's a viewplate, a very complex and clever electronic setup that
reproduces a true picture of what ordinary sight couldn't see."
Banning looked. Beyond the port was stunning darkness and light. The darkness was a depthless void
into which his mind seemed to be falling, tumbling and screaming through drear infinities, disoriented, lost.
But the light—
He looked upon a million million suns. The familiar constellations were lost, their outlines drowned in the
glittering ocean of stars. They crashed in upon him like thunder, he fell and fell in an abyss of ray and
darkness, he—
Banning put his hands over his eyes and turned away. He fell down on the bunk and lay there shuddering.
Rolf closed the port.
"You believe me now?"
Banning groaned.
"Good,” said Rolf. “You believe in a starship. Then you have logically to believe in a civilization capable
of producing a starship, and a type of culture in which a starship is both useful and necessary."
Banning sat up in the bunk, still sick and shaky and clinging to its comforting solidity. He knew it was
hopeless, but he advanced his final negative argument.
"We're not moving. If we're going faster than light—and that's impossible in itself, according to what little
science I know—there ought to be some feeling of acceleration."
"The drive is not mechanical,” Rolf said, standing where he could watch Banning's face. “Its a field-type
force, and since we're part of the field we are, in effect, at rest. So there's no sense of motion. As to
possibility—” He grinned. “While I was on Earth, searching for you, I was amused to note the first crack
in that limiting-speed theory. A research physicist clocked some particles moving faster than light, and the
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THESUNSMASHERByEDMONDHAMILTONARenaissanceEBookspublicationISBN1-58873-914-7AllrightsreservedCopyright©1959,renewedEstateofEdmondHamiltonReprintedbypermissionSpectrumLiteraryAgencyThisbookmaynotbereproducedinwholeorinpartwithoutwrittenpermission.Forinformationcontact:publisher@renebooks.comPageTurner...
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时间：2024-12-23
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