Edmond Hamilton - The Star Hunters

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[The Two Thousand Centuries]

The Era of the Star Kings—130,000-202,115.

THE STAR HUNTERS

Edmond Hamilton

ISBN 978-1-60089-047-5

Reprinted permission of the Spectrum Literary Agency

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

For information contact:

PageTurnerEditions.com

PageTurner Editions/Futures-Past Science Fiction

A Renaissance E Books publication

Certain death faced Mason if he ventured into the untracked Outer Marches of the galaxy; yet if

he didn't go the galaxy itself would die!

[original magazine blurb for Space Travel (formerly Imaginative Tales) Sept 1958]

AUTHOR'S CHRONOLOGY OF THE STAR KINGDOMS

THE TWO THOUSAND CENTURIES

The Era of Interplanetary Exploration and Colonization—1971-2011.

The Era of Interplanetary Frontiers—2011-2247.

The Era of Interplanetary Secession—2247-2621.

The Era of Interstellar Exploration—2300-2621.

The Era of Interstellar Colonization—2621-62,339.

The Era of the Federation and United Worlds—62,339-129,999.

The Era of the Star Kings—130,000-202,115.

The history of two hundred thousand years showed how the entire structure of galactic civilization was

based upon the epochal discovery of sub-spectrum rays.

The era of space-travel had really dawned in 1945 and ‘46, with the first release of atomic energy and

the discovery that radar could function efficiently in space. By the end of the 20th Century,

atomic-powered rockets guided by radar had reached the Moon, Mars and Venus.

Interplanetary exploration and exploitation had increased rapidly. But the vast distances to other stars

remained unconquerable until late in the 22nd Century, when three great inventions made interstellar

travel possible.

The most important of the three was the discovery of sub-spectrum rays. These were hitherto

unsuspected octaves of electromagnetic radiation far below even the gamma and cosmic rays in

wavelength, and which had velocities vastly greater than the speed of light.

Of these sub-spectrum rays the most useful were the so-called pressure rays in the Minus-30th octave of

the spectrum, which could react against the tenuous cosmic dust of space with a powerful pressure.

These pressure rays formed the driving power of star-ships. They were produced in generators powered

by atomic turbines, and were jetted from the stern of a ship to drive it thousands of times faster than light.

The second vital invention was that of the mass-control. Einstein's equations had shown that if a ship

travelled as fast as light, its mass would expand to infinity. This difficulty was overcome by the

mass-control, which “bled” off mass as energy to maintain a constant mass unaltered by velocity. The

energy thus obtained was stored in accumulators and fed back automatically whenever speed was

reduced.

The final invention concerned the human element, Men's bodies would have been unable ordinarily to

withstand those vast accelerations, but this obstacle was conquered by the cradlestasis. This was a stasis

of force which gripped every atom in a ship. The energy-drive jets gave their thrust, not to the ship

directly, but to its stasis. Thus everyone and everything in the ship remained unaffected by acceleration.

Magnetic apparatus furnished artificial gravity on shipboard, similar to that of the tiny

gravitation-equalizers worn by all star-travellers.

The fastest of the sub-spectrum rays, those of the Minus-42nd Octave, were so speedy that they made

light seem to crawl. These super-speed rays were used in telestereo communication and also in the vital

function of radar for the starships.

Using these inventions to build star-ships, mankind took at once to interstellar space. Alpha Centauri,

Sirius and Altair were quickly visited.

Colonies were soon established on suitable star-worlds. For some 10,000 years, Sol and Earth remained

the center of government of a growing region of colonized stars.

Until then, there had been no serious conflicts. Aboriginal alien races of intelligence had been found at

some star-systems and were helped and educated, but there was found no scientific civilization on any

star-world. That had been expected, for if such a race existed it would have visited us long before we

ourselves had conquered space.

But in the year 12,455, a group of star-systems near Polaris complained that Earth was too remote to

appreciate their problems, and they set up an independent kingdom. By 39,000, the kingdoms of Lyra,

Cygnus, and the Baronies of the great Hercules Cluster had declared independence.

Criminals and fugitives from the law seeking refuge in the Cloud eventually founded the League of Dark

Worlds. By 120,000, the star-kingdoms were many. But the biggest was still the Mid-Galactic Empire,

and hosts of star-worlds remained loyal to it. For convenience its government had been shifted in 62,339

from Earth to a world of the great sun Canopus.

The Empire took the lead of the star-kingdoms in the year 129,411 when the galaxy was suddenly

invaded by alien and powerful creatures from the Magellanic Clusters outside. And after that invasion

was repelled the Empire had steadily grown by exploring and colonizing the wild, unmapped star-systems

in the frontier regions called the Marches of Outer Space.

-Edmond Hamilton, 1949

CHAPTER I

THE WRATH of the King of Orion flamed across the void.

Out from the Hyades sped his hunters, and from Mintaka, and Saiph and Aldebaran, grim ships of war

sped headlong between the stars in vengeful search for the small and secret ship that had dared violate

their domain.

The coded messages of anger and alarm flashed far away. And across the galaxy the star-empires heard,

and alertly watched their own frontiers. The Kingdom of Cassiopeia, the federated Barons of Hercules

who held a thousand suns and worlds, the Kings of Leo and Hydra and Draco, all these and a score of

smaller realms clear away to the Marches of Outer Space sent forth their fleets to watch, jealous of the

great empire of Orion, and more jealous still of the equally great and far older Terran Empire whose ship

it was that the hunters hunted.

The fleeing ship was a Class Five Scout of the Terran Navy, a tiny toy craft compared to the great

cruisers and heavies that pursued it. Its guns were popguns, it had hardly any armor, but it could go fast.

It was going very fast now, a mote of metal flying toward the Terran frontier. But, Hugh Mason knew

with fatal knowledge, it was not fast enough.

"We haven't got a prayer,” said Stack. Red-eyed and unshaven, he did not look like the captain of a

Scout as he stood with Mason behind the pilot in the little control room. He looked like a tramp.

"Those cruisers behind can't catch us,” said Mason.

"No, they can't,” said Stack. “But what about the ones ahead?

They'll be fanning out from Aldebaran right now."

Mason made no answer but his mouth tightened as he looked out the broad control-room window, the

window that was really a complicated scanner translating scrambled-up rays into ordinary light.

The light of a million stars beat upon him from the titanic panorama of stellar glare and cosmic gloom.

Amid the abyssal lamps of sapphire blue and diamond white and smoky orange there glowed like a

friendly beacon the whitish-green magnificence of Sirius, and beyond it the far yellow spark of Sol, old

capital of the Terran Empire and the fountainhead from which man had spread through the galaxy. But

closer and almost dead ahead was the blood-colored flare of Aldebaran, whose system was near the

limits of the Orionid Empire.

Mason had often wondered how this stupefying vista had looked to the first men who had gone out from

Sol to colonize the galaxy, thousands of years ago. Their frail star-ships had been borne out into the great

deeps by their courage and faith, their dream of a peopled galaxy living in peace under universal law. But

the dream had crumbled. One center of government could not hold the whole galaxy. The independent

kingdoms had sprung up, rejecting the authority of the Terran Empire, yet taking old Terran titles of

royalty for their chosen sovereigns. Oldest, biggest, was the Terran Empire that still would have no

sovereign except its elected Council. But others were almost as strong, and their kings yearned for

greater glory, like Janissar of Orion.

Thinking of that, Mason's hands clenched upon a stanchion. Between his teeth, he said,

"We've got to get Oliphant back to Terra before he dies. He's the key to everything."

Stack shrugged hopelessly. “Aldebaran is one of Orion's main fleet bases. They'll know we're coming.

Communic beams are faster than ships."

Mason said harshly, “I know all that. In case you've forgotten, I was a flight officer before I went into

Intelligence."

Stack flushed, “No offense."

Mason turned then. He was thirty-two and he felt like a hundred-and-two, a dark man with stubble on

his face and a desperation in his eyes. He said, “We're both beat to pieces. Forget my crack. If we start

slandering each other, we're licked. We've got to think fast."

Stack gestured toward the great star ahead that like a bloody eye watched them come.

"Their cruisers will fan out east, west, zenith and nadir from Aldebaran. We have to go around

Aldebaran's planetary system, yet if we swing wide around their cruiser screens we'll run into ships

coming up from Aleph and Charmar."

Mason looked at the star-blazing firmament and said, “Once past Aldebaran, the Terran frontier isn't far.

But you're right, we can't swing wide around their cruiser screens."

"So we have to hit their net and try to crash through it,” said Stack.

"They'd blow us out of space,” said Mason. His jaw tightened. “There's only one hole, one way through

them."

"There won't be any hole,” said Stack. “From Aldebaran system out every direction, they'll be so tight a

fly couldn't get through—

Of a sudden, looking at Mason's drawn face, he was silent. Then, in an altered voice he said, “Now I get

it. One hole. Right through Aldebaran's planetary system itself."

"That's it,” nodded Mason.

Stack mapped his brow, and the pilot turned and flashed a startled glance at them. Stack said, “You

know what our chances will be, at these speeds?"

"I know we haven't any chance at all, any other way,” said Mason. “Set it up on the computers. I'm going

back to see Oliphant."

He left the crowded control room and went back along the narrow companionway that was the axis of

the SC-1419. A Scout-class starship had barely room for its machinery and its eight men. Its whole

metal fabric seemed to vibrate in every atom from the thrust of its massive drive-units, as it bolted at

milli-light-speeds toward the frontier.

Mason squeezed between towering ion-drive assemblies that smelled of hot metal, and into the tiny

cubby where Oliphant lay strapped in a bunk. One of the crew, young Finetti, was sitting beside him and

looked up at Mason.

"He's worse,” said Finetti. “Pulse, respiration, everything."

"He hasn't come to?"

"Not for a minute, ever since we picked him up,” said Finetti. He added, “I wish I could do more for him.

I'm not a medic, just a spacer with six-months first-aid training."

"You're doing fine,” said Mason. He bent down over the bunk.

"Oliphant,” he said.

The man in the bunk did not answer. His thin face was gray and immobile, the eyes shut. There was only

a faint rise and fall of the mass of bandages that swathed his whole torso.

He was a small man. But to Mason, he loomed gigantic. For Oliphant, his friend and superior, had done

a thing no man in all the history of Terran Intelligence had done before. He had gone right into the

throne-world of the Orionid Empire, deep in the Pleiades, in search of a secret, and he had come away

again.

He hadn't had to do it. He was high enough in the service to give the job to Mason or anyone else. But

the peace of the galaxy was an uneasy one, with only the weight and power of the Terran Empire keeping

the jealous star-kings from each other's threats. And when the rumor had come from Orion, Oliphant

himself had gone in to learn the truth.

A rumor, a whisper, filtering by devious channels across the void. The whisper had said that Janissar,

King-Sovereign of Orion, was a happy man. That he was reaching toward a power, a weapon, a

something, that would make Orion supreme. If he got it, if he used it to enlarge his empire; the peace of

the galaxy would be torn to shreds. It might be only a baseless rumor. Oliphant had gone in to find out.

It was the SC-1419 that had taken him to a dead, airless globe in the Pleiades, sneaking secretly into

Orion space. In his little flitter, Oliphant had gone away from there, heading for the throne-world of the

king of Orion. They had waited, and finally the flitter had come back. But it had come back on auto-pilot,

with Oliphant inside it mortally wounded and unconscious. And he had remained unconscious ever since,

and whatever he had learned was still locked in his brain.

"Oliphant!” said Mason again, close to his ear. “It's Mason. Mason."

The waxen face did not stir. Oliphant was far away in realms of sleep where friends and stars and

empires meant nothing.

"I don't think he can last all the way home, sir,” said Finetti. And added anxiously, on a questioning note,

“If we get home."

Mason slowly straightened up. “Do all you can for him. We'll get home. We—"

The annunciator in the wall said, in Stack's voice, “Mason!"

Mason went back to the control-room on the double. The hysterical whirring of the computer was just

ceasing, as he entered.

Stack said stolidly, “Their cruisers ahead have radar-ranged us. We're running right onto them now."

Mason glanced through the scanner-window. Aldebaran was now a great red blaze amid the stars, a little

to the right. Its smaller companion-sun was almost hidden in its glare.

"To fool them on our intentions, we shouldn't turn toward it till the last moment,” said Stack. “That

means, when they start shelling us."

Mason nodded. “It's your ship."

"Is it?” said Stack sourly. “It was until I came under Intelligence orders. Now I don't know."

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