Classic Audiobook Collection - Raiders of the Universes by Donald Wandrei ~ Full Audiobook [scifi]

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Raiders of the Universes by Donald Wandrei audiobook. Genre: scifi It was the 34th century and all five of the Federation of Planets around Sol were buzzing with their usual activity when the Raiders appeared. They were indeed Raiders of Universes because they had ravaged many systems before reaching Earth and showed no signs of slowing down in the least. Their weapons were invincible, their greed merciless and their natures completely alien. Indeed 'they' were from another dimension entirely. Eating up entire solar systems and planets, they slowed down just a bit when intelligent life was found on Earth. Not much since they were in a hurry, but just long enough to tell the Earthlings to mine all the Radium ore on Earth and put it conveniently on the surface ...... in six days....or else. - For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:30:07) Chapter 02 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It was in the 34th century that the dark star began its famous conquest, unparalleled and stellar annals. Fobar, the astronomer, discovered it. He was sweeping the heavens with one of the newly invented multi-powered Sussendorf comet hunters, when something caught his eye, a new star of great brilliance in the foreground of the constellation Hercules. For the rest of the night, he cast aside all the night. his plans and concentrated on the one star. He witnessed an unprecedented event. Mercy's nullifier had just been invented, a curious and intricate device, based on four-dimensional geometry that made it possible to seal occurrences in the universe which had hitherto required the hundreds

of years needed for a light to cross the intervening space before they were visible on Earth. By a hasty calculation with the aid of this invention, Fobar found that the new star was about three thousand light years distant, and that it was hurtling backward into space at the rate of twelve hundred miles per second. The remarkable feature of his discovery was this appearance of a fourth magnitude star where none had been known to exist. Perhaps it had come into existence this very much. night. On the succeeding night, he was given a greater surprise. In line with the first star

but several hundred light years nearer was a second new star of even more brightness, and it, too, was hurtling backward into space at approximately 1,200 miles per second. Fobar was astonished. Two new stars discovered within 24 hours in the same part of the same part of the same time of the first night. the heavens, both of the fourth magnitude. But his surprise was as nothing went on the succeeding night even while he watched. A third new star appeared in line with these, but much closer. At midnight he first noticed a pinpoint of faint light. By one o'clock the star was of eighth magnitude.

At two it was a brilliant sun of the second magnitude, blazing away from Earth like the other others, at a rate of twelve hundred miles per second. And on the next evening and the next and the next other new stars appeared until there were seven in all, every one on a line in the same constellation, Hercules, everyone with the same radiance and the same proper motion, though a varying size. Fobar had broadcast his discovery to incredulous astronomers, but as Star after star appeared nightly. All the telescopes on Earth were turned toward one of the most spectacular cataclysms

that history recorded. Far out in the depths of space, with unheard of regularity and unheard of precision, new worlds were flaming up overnight in a line that began at Hercules and extended toward the solar system. Fobar's announcement was immediately flashed to Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the other members of the Five World Federation. Saturn reported no evidence of the phenomena because of the interfering rings and the lack of mercy as nullifier.

But Jupiter, with a similar device, witnessed the phenomena and announced furthermore that many stars in the neighborhood of the new Nove had begun to deviate in singular and abrupt fashion from their normal positions. There was not as yet much popular interest in the phenomena. Without Mercier's nullifier, the stars were not visible to ordinary eyes, since the light rays would take years to reach the earth. But every astronomer who had access to Mercia's nullifier hastened to focus his telescope on the region

where extraordinary events were taking place out in the unfathomable Gulf of night. Some terrific force was at work, creating worlds and disturbing the positions of stars within a radius already known to extend billions and trillions of miles from the path of the seven new stars. But of the nature of that force, astronomers could only guess. Fobar took up his duties early on the eighth night. The last star had appeared about 500 light years. distant. If an eighth new star was found, it should be not more than a few light years away. But nothing happened. All night, Fobar kept his telescope pointed at the probable spot, but searches he might the heavens showed nothing new. In the morning he sought eagerly for news

of any discovery made by fellow watchers, but they too had found nothing unusual. Could it be that the mystery would now fade away, a new riddle of the skies? The next evening he took up his position once more, training his telescope on the seven bright stars, and then on the region where an eighth, if there were one, should appear. For hours he searched the abyss in vain. He could find none. Apparently the phenomena were ended.

At midnight he took a last glance, before entering on some tedious calculations. It was there. In the center of the telescope, a faint, hazy object steadily grew in brightness. All his problems were forgotten as Fobar watched the eighth star increase hourly. Closer than any other,

closer even than Alpha Centauri, the new sun appeared, scarcely three light years away across the void surrounding the solar system. and all the while he watched, he witnessed a thing no man had ever seen before, the birth of a world. By one o'clock the new star was of fifth magnitude, by two it was of the first. As the faint flush of dawn began to come toward the close of that frosty moonless November night,

The new star was a great white-hot object, more brilliant than any other star in the heavens. Fobar knew that when its light finally reached Earth so that ordinary eyes could see it, it would be the most beautiful object in the night sky. What was the reason for these unparalleled births of worlds and the terrifying mathematical precision that characterized them? Whatever the cosmic force behind, it was progressing toward the solar system.

Perhaps it would even disturb the balance of the planets. The possible chance of such an event had already called the attention of some astronomers, but the whole phenomenon was too inexplicable to permit more than speculation. The next evening was cloudy. Jupiter reported nothing new except that Neptune had deviated from its course and tended to pursue an erratic and puzzling new orbit. Fobar pondered long over this last news item, and turned his attention to the outermost planet on the succeeding night.

To his surprise, he had great difficulty in locating it. The ephemeris was of absolutely no use. When he did locate Neptune after a brief search, He discovered it more than 80 million miles from its scheduled place. This was at 140. At 210, he was thunderstruck by a special announcement sent from the Central Bureau to every observatory and astronomer of note throughout the world, proclaiming the discovery of an ultra-plutonian planet.

Fobar was incredulous. For centuries it had been proved that no planet, on Pluto could possibly exist. With feverish haste, Fobar ran to the huge telescope, and rapidly focused it where the new planet should be. Five hundred million miles beyond Neptune was a flaming path like the beam of a giant searchlight that extended exactly to the eighth solar planet. Fobar gasped.

He could hardly credit the testimony of his eyes. he looked more closely. The great stream of flame still crossed his line of vision, but this time he saw something else, at the precise farther end of the flame path, a round disk dark. Beyond a doubt a new planet of vast size now formed an addition to the solar group,

but that planet was almost impervious to the illuminating rays of the sun and was barely discernible. Neptune itself shone brighter than it ever had, and was falling away from the sun at a rate of twelve hundred miles per second. All night, Fobar watched the double mystery. By three o'clock he was convinced, as far as lightning calculations, showed, that the invader was hurtling toward the sun

at a speed of more than ten million miles an hour. At three-fifteen, he thought that vanishing Neptune seemed brighter even than the band of fire running to the invader. At four, his belief was certainty. With amazement and awe, Fobar sat through the long, cold night, watching a spectacular and terrible catastrophe in the sky. As dawn began to break and the stars grew paler, Fobar turned away from his telescope, his brain.

a whirl, his heart filled with a great fear. He had witnessed the devastation of a world, the ruin of a member of his own planetary system by an invader from outer space. As Dawn cut short his observations, he knew at last the cause of Neptune's brightness, knew that it was now a white-hot flaming sun that sped with increased rapidity away from the solar system. Somehow, the terrible swath of fire that flowed from the dark star to Neptune had wrenched it out of its orbit and made it a molden inferno. At dawn came another bulletin from the Central Bureau.

Neptune had a surface temperature of 3,000 degrees centigrade, was defying all laws of celestial mechanics, and within three days would have left the solar. system forever. The results of such a disaster were unpredictable. The entire solar system was likely to break up. Already Uranus and Jupiter had deviated from their orbits. Unless something speedily occurred to check the on-rush of the dark star, it was prophesied that the laws governing the planetary system would run to a new balance and that in the

ensuing chaos, the whole group would spread apart and fall to. toward the gulfs beyond the great surrounding void. What was the nature of the great path of fire? What force did it represent? And was the dark star controlled by intelligence? Or was it a blind wanderer from space that had come by accident? The flame path alone implied that the dark star was guided by an intelligence that possessed the secret of inconceivable power.

Menace hung in the air now where all eyes could see in a great arc of fire. The world was on the brink of eternity, and vast forces at whose nature men could only guess were sweeping planets and suns out of its path. The following night was again cold and clear. High in the heavens, where Neptune should have been, hung a disc of enormously greater size. Neptune itself was almost invisible, hundreds of millions of miles beyond its scheduled position.

As nearly as Fobar could estimate, not one hundredth of the sun's rays were reflected from the surface of the dark star, a proportion far below those of the other planets. Fobar had a better view of the flame path, and it was with growing awe that he watched that strange swath in the sky during the dead of night. It shot out from the dark star like a colossal beam or huge pillar of fire, seeking a food of whirls.

With a shiver of cold fear he saw that there were now three of the bands, one toward Neptune, one towards Saturn, and one toward the sun. The first was fading, a milky, misty white, The second shone almost as bright as the first one previously had, and the third toward the sun, was a dazzling stream of orange radiance, burning with a steady, terrible, unbelievable intensity across two and a half billions of miles of space. That gigantic flare was the most brilliant sight in the whole night sky, an awful and abysmal prophetic flame that made city streets black with staring people,

a radiance whose grandeur and terrific implication of cosmic power brought beauty and the fear of doom into the heavens. Those paths could not be explained by all the physicists and all the astronomers in the Five World Federation. They possessed the properties of light, but they were rigid bands, like a tube or a solid pillar from which only the faintest of rays escaped, and they completely shut off the heavens behind them. They had, moreover, singular properties which could not be described as if a new force were embodied in them. Hour after hour, humanity watched the spectacular progress of the dark star,

watched those mysterious and threatening paths of light that flowed from the invader, When dawn came, it brought only a great fear and the oppression of impending disaster. In the early morning Fobar slept. When he awoke he felt refreshed and decided to take a short walk in the familiar and peaceful light of day. He never took that walk. He opened the door on a kind of dim and reddish twilight, not a cloud in the sky, but the sun shone feebly with a dull reddish, red glow, and the skies were dull and somber, as if the sun were dying, as scientists had

predicted it eventually would. Fobar stared at the dull heavens in a daze, at the foreboding atmosphere and the livid sun that burned faintly as through a smoke curtain. Then the truth flashed on him. It was the terrible path of fire from the dark store. By what means he could not guess, by what appalling control of immense and inconceivable forces he could not even imagine. The dark star was sucking light and perhaps more than light from the sun. Fobar turned and shut the door.

The world had seen its last dawn. If the purpose of the dark star was destruction, none of the planets could offer much opposition, for no weapon of theirs was effective beyond a few thousand miles range at most, and the dark star could span millions. If the invader passed on, its havoc would be only a trifle smaller, for it had already destroyed two members of the solar system and was now striking at its most vital part. Without the sun, life would die.

But even with the sun, the planets must rearrange themselves because of the destruction of balance. Even he could hardly grasp the vast and abysmal catastrophe that without warning had swept from space. How could the dark star have traversed three thousand light years of space in a week's time? It was unthinkable. So stupendous a control of power, so gigantic a manipulation of cosmic forces,

so annihilating a possession of the gregory, of the greatest secrets of the universe was an unheard-of concentration of energy and knowledge of stellar mechanics. But the evidence of his own eyes and the path of the dark star with flaming suns to mark its progress told him in language which could not be refuted that the dark star possessed all that immeasurable titanic knowledge. It was the lord of the universe.

There was nothing which the dark star could not crush or conquer or change. The thought of that immense supreme power numbed his mind. It opened vistas of a civilization and a progress and an unparalleled mastery of all knowledge which was almost beyond conception. Already the news had raced across the world. On Fobar's television screen flashed scenes of nightmare. The radio spewed a gibberish of terror. In one day, panic had swept the earth.

On the remaining members of the Five World Federation, the same story was repeated. Rioting mobs drowned out the chant of religious fanatics who hailed Judgment Day. Great fires turned the air murky and flame shot. Machine guns spat regularly in city streets, looting, murder, and fear-crazed crime. were universal. Civilization had completely vanished overnight. The tides roared higher than they ever had before. For every thousand people drowned on the American seaboard, a hundred thousand perished in

China and India. Dead volcanoes boomed into the worst eruptions known. Half of Japan sank during the most violent earthquake in history. rocked, the seas boiled, cyclones howled out of the skies. A billion eyes focused on Mecca. The mad beating of Tom-Toms rolled across all Africa. Women and children were trampled to death by the crowds that jammed into churches. Has man lived in vain? asked the philosopher.

The world is doomed, there is no escape, said the scientist. The day of reckoning has come. wrath of God is upon us, shouted the street preachers. In a day's, Fobar switched off the bedlam, and, walking like a man asleep, strode out. He did not care where, if only, to get away. The ground and the sky were like a dying fire. The sun seemed a half-dead cinder. Only the great swath of radiance between the sun and the dark star had any brilliance.

Sinister, menacing, now larger even than the sun, the invader from beyond hung in the heavens. As Fobar watched it, the air around him prickled strangely. A sixth sense gave warning. He turned to race back into his house. His legs failed. A fantastic orange light bathed him. Countless needles of pain shot through his whole body.

The world darkened. Earth had somehow been blotted out. There was a brief blackness, the nausea of space and of a great fall that compressed eternity into a moment. Then a swimming confusion and outlines which gradually came to rest. Fobar was too utterly amazed to cry out or run. He stood inside the most titanic edifice. he could have imagined a single gigantic structure,

vaster than all New York City. Far overhead swept a black roof fading into the horizon. Beneath his feet was the same metal substance. In the midst of this giant work soared the base of a tower that pierced the roof thousands of feet above. Everywhere loomed machines,

enormous dynamos, cathode tubes a hundred feet long, masses and mountains of such fantastic apparatus as he had never encountered. The air was bluish, electric. From the black substance came a phosphorescent radiance. The triumphant drone of motors and a terrific crackle of electricity were everywhere. Off to his right, purple-blue flames the sun. of sequoia trees flickered around a group of what looked like condensers as huge as Gibraltar. At the base of the central tower, half a mile distant, Fobar could see something that resembled a great switchboard studded with silver controls. Near it was a series of mechanisms at whose purpose he could not even guess. All this his astounded eyes took in at one confused

glanced. The thing that gave him unreasoning terror was the hundred-foot-high metal monster before him. It defied description. It was unlike any color known on earth, a blinding color sinister with power and evil. Its shape was equally ambiguous. It rippled like quicksilver, now compact, now spread out in a thousand limbs. But what appalled Fobar was its definite possession of rational life. More, its very thoughts were transmitted to him as clearly as though written in its own English.

Follow me. Fobar's mind did not function, but his legs moved regularly. In the grasp of this mental, metal monster, he was a mere automaton. Fobar noticed idly that he had to step down from a flat disk a dozen yards across. By some power, some tremendous discovery that he could not understand, he had been transported across millions of miles of space, undoubtedly to the dark star itself. The colossal thing, indescribable, a blinding, nameless color,

rippled down the hall and stooped before a disk of silvery black. In the center of the disk was a metal seat with a control board nearby. B seated. Fobar sat down. The Titan flicked the controls, and nothing happened. Fobar sensed that something was radically wrong. He felt the surprise of his gigantic companion. He did not know it then. But the fate of the solar system hung on that incident.

Come! Abruptly the giant stooped and Fobar shrank back, but a flowing mass of cold, insensate metal swept around him, lifted him fifty feet in the air. Dizzy, sick, horrified, he was hardly conscious of the whirlwind motion into which the giant suddenly shot. He had a dim impression,

of machines racing by, of countless other giants, of a sudden opening in the walls of the immense building, and then a rush across the surface of metal land. Even in his vertigo he had enough curiosity to marvel that there was no vegetation, no water, only the dull black metal everywhere. Yet there was air. And then a city loomed before them. To Fobar it seemed a city of gods or giants. Fully five miles it soared towards space.

Its fantastic ankles and arcs and cubes and pyramids, mazing in the dimensions of a totally alien geometry. Tier by tier, the stupendous city, hundreds of miles wide, mounted toward a central tower like the one in the building he had left. Fobor never knew how they got there, but his numbed mind was at last forced into clarity by a greater will. He stared about him. His captor had gone.

He stood in a huge chamber, circling to a dome far overhead. Before him, on a dais, a full thousand feet in diameter, stood, sat, rested, whatever it might be called, another monster. Far larger than any he had yet seen, like a mountain of pliant-thinking, living metal. And Fobar knew he stood in the presence of the ruler. The metal cyclops surveyed him, as Fobar might have surveyed an ant. Cold, deadly, dispassionate scrutiny

came from something that might have been eyes or a seeing intelligence locked in a metal body. There was no sound, but inwardly to Fobar's consciousness, from the peak of the Titan far above him, came a command. What are you called? Fobar opened his lips, but even before he spoke he knew that the thing had understood his thought. Fobar. I am Gorboreg, ruler of ex-loibity, the Lord of the Universes. Lord of the universes?

I in my world came from one of the universes beyond the reach of your telescopes. Fobar somehow felt that the thing was talking to him as he would to a newborn babe. What do you want of me? Tell your earth that I want the entire supply of your radium oars mind and placed above ground according to the instructions I give by seven of your days hence. A dozen questions sprang to Fobar's lips. He felt again that he was being treated like a child. Why do you want our radium oars?

Because they are the rarest of the elements on your scale, are absent on ours, and supply us with some of the tremendous energy we need. Why don't you obtain the oars from other worlds? We do. We are taking them from all worlds where they exist, but we need yours also. Raiders of the universe? Looting young worlds of the precious radium ores?

Piracy on a cosmic scale. And if Earth refuses your demand? End of Part 1. Part 2 of Raiders of the Universes by Donald Wondry. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. And if Earth refuses your demand? For answer, Gorboreg rippled to a wall of the room and pressed a button. The wall dissolved, weirdly, mysteriously.

A series of vast silver plates was revealed and a battery of control levers. This will happen to all of your earth unless the oars are given us. The Titan closed a switch. On the first screen flashed the picture of a huge tower, such as Fobar had seen in the metal city. Gorboreg adjusted a second control that was something like a rangefinder. He pressed a third lever, and from the tower leaped a surge of terrific energy, like a bolt of lightning a quarter of a mile broad.

The giant closed another switch, and on the second plate flashed a picture of New York City. Then, waiting. Seconds, minutes drifted by. The atmosphere became tense, nerve-cracking. Fobar's eyes ached with the intensity of his stare. What would happen? Abruptly, it came. A monstrous bolt of energy streaked from the sky.

purple-blue death in a pillar a fourth of a mile broad crashed into the heart of New York City swept up and down Manhattan across and back and suddenly vanished in 15 seconds only a molten in hell effused structures and incinerated millions of human beings remained of the world's first city. Fobar was crushed, appalled. Then utter loathing for this soulless thing poured through him. If only— "'It is useless.

You can do nothing,' answered the ruler as though it had grasped his thought. "'But why? If you could pick me off the earth. Do you not draw the radium ores in the same way, Fobar demanded. The orange ray picks up only loose portable objects. We can and will transport the radium ores here by means of the ray after they have been mined and placed on platforms or disks. Why did you select me from all the millions of people on Earth?

solely because you were the first apparent scientist whom our cosmotel chanced upon, it will be up to you to notify your earth governments of our demand. But afterwards, Fobar burst out aloud. What then? We will depart. It will mean death to us. The solar system will be wrecked with Neptune gone and Saturn following it. Gorboreg made no answer.

To that impassive, cold, inhuman thing, it did not matter if a nation or a whole world perished. Fow war had already seen with what deliberate calm it destroyed a city merely to show him what power the lords of ex-larbiti controlled. Besides, what guarantee was there that the invaders would not loot the earth of everything they wanted and then annihilate all the life upon it before they departed.

Yet Fobor knew he was helpless, knew that the men of earth would be forced to do whatever was asked of them, and trust that the raiders would fulfill their promise. Two hours remained for your stay here, came the ruler's dictum to interrupt his line of thought. For the first half of that period, you will tell me of your world and answer whatever questions I may ask, During the rest of the interval, I will explain some of the things you wish to learn about us.

Again, Fobor felt Gorboreg's disdain. Knew that the metal giant regarded him as a kind of a childish plaything for an hour or two's amusement, but he had no choice. And so he told Gorboreg of the life on earth, how it arose, and along what lines it had developed. He narrated in brief the extent of man's knowledge, his scientific achievements, his mastery of weapons and forces and machines, his social organization. When he had finished, he felt as a stone-aged man might feel in the presence of a brilliant scientist of the 34th century. If any sign of interest has shown on the peak of the metallic lord, Fobar failed to see it. but he sensed an intolerant sneer of ridicule in Golborreg,

as though the ruler considered these statements to be only the most elementary effects. Then, for three-quarters of an hour, in a manner of one lecturing an ignorant pupil, the giant crowded its thought pictures into Fobor's mind, so that finally he understood a little of the raiders, and of the sudden terror that had flamed from the abyss into the solar system. The universe of matter that you know is only one of the countless universes which comprise the cosmos, began Garboereg. In your universe you have a scale of 92 elements, you have your color spectrum, your rays and waves of many kinds. You are subject to definite laws controlling matter and energy as you know them,

but we are of a different universe, on a different scale from yours, a trillion light years away in space, eons distant in time. The natural laws which govern us differ from those controlling you. In our universe, you would be hopelessly lost, completely helpless, unless you possess the knowledge that your people will not attain even in millions of years. But we, who are so much older and greater than you, have for so long studied the nature of the other universes, that we can enter and leave them at will,

taking what we wish, doing as we wish, creating or destroying worlds wherever the need arises, coming and hurtling away when we choose. There is no vegetable life in our universe. There is only the scale of elements ranging from 842 to 966 on the extension of your own scale. At this high range, metals of complex kinds exist. There is none of what you call water, no vegetable world, no animal kingdom.

Instead, there are energies, forces, rays, and waves, which are food to us, and which nourish our life stream just as pigs, potatoes, and bread are food to you. Trillions of years ago in your time calculation, but only a few dozen centuries ago in hours, life arose on the giant whirl Kai Gipton in. in our universe. It was life, our life, the life of my people and myself, intelligence animating bodies of pliant metal,

existing almost endlessly on an almost inexhaustible source of energy. But all matter wears down. On Kaigiton, there was a variety of useful metals, others that were valueless. There was comparatively little of the first, much of the second. Kaigipton itself was a world as large as your entire solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Kaigipton was dying,

that the store of our most precious element, Starel, was dwindling. But already our ancestors had mastered the forces of our universe, had made inventions that are beyond your understanding, had explored the limits of our universe in space cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by the attraction-repelling influences of stars. The metal inhabitants of Kaigipton employed every invention they knew

to accomplish an engineering miracle that makes your bridges and minds seem the puny efforts of a net. They blasted all the remaining oars of Starel from the surface and interior of Kigipton and refined them. Then they created a gigantic vacuum, a dead field in space a hundred million miles away from their world. The dead field was controlled from Kigipton by atomic projectors, energy absorbers,

gravitation nullifiers and cosmetals, range regulators, and a host of other inventions. As fast as it was mined and extracted, the Starel metal was vaporized, shot into the dead field by interstellar rays, and solidified there along an invisible framework which we projected. In a decade of our time, we had pillaged Kaigiton of every particle of Starel. And then, in our skies hung an artificial world, a manufactured sphere, a giant new planet. The world you yourself are now on. Ex-Larbiti We did not create a solid globe.

We left chambers, tunnels, passageways, store rooms throughout it or piercing it from surface to surface. Thus, even as XLRBT was created, we provided for everything that we needed or could need. Experimental laboratories, subsurface vaults, chambers for the innumerable huge ray dynamos, energy storage batteries and other apparatus which we required. And when all was ready, we transferred by spacecars and by atomic individuation, all our necessities from Kaigipton to the artificial world exlarbiti. And when everything was prepared, we destroyed the dead field by duplicate control from exlarbity,

turned our repulsion power on full against the now useless and dying giant world Kaigipton, and swung upon our path. But our whole universe is incredibly old. It was mature before even your young suns flamed out of the gaseous nebulae. It was decaying when your molten planets were flung from the central sun. It was dying before the boiling seas had given birth to land upon your sphere. And while we had enough of our own particular electrical food to last us for a million of your years, and enough power to guide exorbit to other universes,

we had exhausted all the remaining energy of our entire universe. And when we finally left it to dwindle behind us in the black abyss of space, we left it a dead cinder, devoid of life, vitiated of activity, and utterly lacking in cosmic forces, A universe finally run down. The universes, as you may know, are set off from each other by totally black and empty abysses. Expanses so vast that light rays have not yet crossed many of them. How did we accomplish the feat of traversing such a gulf?

By the simplest of means, acceleration. Why? Because to remain in our universe meant inevitable death. We gambled on the greatest adventure in all the cosmos. To begin with, we circled our universe to the remotest point opposite where we wanted to leave it. We then turned our attraction powers on partway so that the millions of stars before us drew us ahead. then we gradually stepped up the power to its full strength, thus ever increasing our speed.

At the same time as stars passed to our rear in our flight, we turned our repulsion rays against them, stepping that power up also. Our initial speed was 24 miles per second. Midway in our universe we had reached the speed of your light, 186,000 miles per second. By the time we left our universe, we were hurtling at a speed which we estimated to be

1,600 million miles per second. Yet, even at that tremendous speed, it took us years to cross from our universe to yours. If we had encountered even a planetoid at that enormous rate, we would probably have been annihilated in white, hot death. But we had planned well, and there were no superiors to our stellar mechanics, our astronomers, our scientists.

When we finally hurtled from the black void into your universe, we found what we had only dared hope for. A young universe, with many planets and cooling worlds rich in radiumours, The only element in your scale that can help to replenish our vanishing energy. Half your universe we have already deprived of its oars. Your earth has more that we want. Then we shall continue on our way to loot the rest of the worlds before passing on to another universe. We are a planet without a universe.

We will wander and pillage until we find a universe like the one we came from, or until exlarbiti itself disintegrates, and we perish. We could easily wipe out all the dwellers on earth and mine the oars ourselves, but that would be a needless waste of our powers, for since you cannot defy us, and since the desire for our life burns as high in you as in us, and as it does in all sensate things in all universes, your people will save themselves from death

and save us from wasting energy by mining the oars for us. What happens afterwards? We do not care. The seven new sons that you saw were dead worlds that we used as buffers to slow down exlarbiti. The full strength of our repulsor force

directed against any single world necessarily turns it into a liquid or gaseous state, depending on various factors. Your planet Neptune was pulled out of the solar system by the attraction of its larbite's mass. The flame paths, as you call them, are directed streams of energy for different purposes. The one to the sun supplies us, for instance, with heat, light, and electricity, which in turn are stored up for eventual use. The orange ray that you felt is one of our achievements. It is similar to the double-action pumps used in some of your sulfur mines,

whereby a pipe is enclosed in a larger pipe and hot water forced down through the larger tubing returns sulfur-ladened through the central pipe. The orange ray instantaneously dissolves any portable object up to a single tube, certain size, propels it back to exlarbiti through its center, which is the reversed ray, and here reforms the object, just as you were recreated on the disk that you stood on when you regained consciousness. But I have not enough time to explain everything on exlarbity to you, nor would you comprehend it all if I did.

Your stay is almost up. In that one control panel lies all the power that we have massed. boasted Gorboreg with supreme egotism it connects with the individual controls throughout exlarbiti what is the purpose of some of the levers asked Fobar with a desperate hope in his thoughts a filament of metal whipped to the panel from the lord of exlarbity this first section duplicates the control panel that you saw in the laboratory where you opened your eyes do not think that you can make use of this information. In ten minutes you will be back on your earth to deliver our command.

Between now and that moment you will be so closely watched that you can do nothing and will have no opportunity to try. The first lever controls the attraction rays. The second the repulsion force. The third dial regulates the orange ray by which you will be returned to Earth. The fourth switch directs the electrical bolt that destroyed New York City. Next is a device that we have never had occasion to use. It releases the Crongor wave throughout Exlarbiti.

Its effect is to make each atom of Exlarbiti the Starel metal, and everything on it become compact to do away with the empty spaces that exist in every atom. Theoretically, it would reduce Exlarbitrbate, to a fraction of his present size, diminish its mass, while its weight and gravity remained as before. The next lever controls matter to be transported between here and the first laboratory.

Somewhat like the orange ray, it disintegrates the object and reassembles it here. So that was what Fobor's captor had been trying to do with him back there in the laboratory. Why was I not brought here, By that means, burst out Fobar. Because you belong to a different universe, answered Garbereg. Without experimentation, we cannot tell what natural laws of ours you would not be subject to, but this is one of them. A gesture of irritation seemed to come from him.

Some laws hold good in all the universes we have thus far investigated. The orange ray, for instance, picked you up as it would have plucked one of us from the surface of Kaigipton, but on Exlarbiti, which is composed entirely of Stahlrel, your atomic nature and physical constitution are so different from ours that they were unaffected by the energy that ordinarily transports objects here. Thus the metal nightmare went rapidly over the control panel. At length Foboros captor, or another thing like him, re-entered when Gorboreg flicked a strange-looking protuberance on the panel. You will now be returned to your earth, came the thought of Garbereg.

We shall watch you through our cosmetel to see that you deliver our instructions. Unless the nations of Earth obey us, they will be obliterated at the end of seven days. A wild impulse to smash that impassive metallic monster Passed from Fobar as quickly as he came He was helpless Sick and despairing He felt the cold, baffling colored metal clothes around him again Once more he was born aloft for the journey to the laboratory

From there to be propelled back to earth Seven Days of Grace but Fobar knew that less than ten minutes remained to him. Only here could he possibly accomplish anything. Once off the surface of Exlarbuti, there was not the remotest chance that all the nations of Earth could reach the invaders, or even attempt to defy them. Yet, what could he alone do in a week to say nothing of ten minutes? He sensed the amused, supercilious contempt of his captor.

That was really the greatest obstacle. This ability of theirs to read thought pictures. And already he had given them enough word pictures of English so that they could understand. In the back of Fobar's mind, the ghost of a desperate thought suddenly came. What was it he had learned years ago in college? Homer, the Odyssey, Plutarch, from rusty disused corners of memory, crept forth the half-forgotten words. He bent all his efforts to the task, not daring to think ahead or plan ahead or visualize anything but the Greek words. He felt the bewilderment of his captor.

To throw it off the track, Fobar suddenly let an ancient English nursery rhyme slip into his thoughts. The disgust that emanated from his captor was laughable. Fobar could have shouted aloud, but the Greek words. Already the pair had left the mountain-high Titan City far behind. They rippled across the smooth black surface of exlarbiti, and bore like rifle bullets down on the swiftly looming laboratory. In a few minutes it would be too late forever. Now the lost Greek words burst into Fobar's mind and, hoping against hope, he thought in

Greek word pictures which his captor could not understand. He weighed chances, long shots, into his brain flashed an idea. But they were upon the laboratory, a stupendous door dissolved weirdly into shimmering haze. They sped through. Fobar's hand clutched a bulge in his pocket. Would it work? How could it? They were beyond the door now and racing across the great expanse of the floor,

past the central tower, past the control panel which he had first seen, and as if by magic there leaped into Fobar's mind a clear-cut, vivid picture of violet oceans of energy crackling and streaking from the heavens to crash through the laboratory roof and barely mistriking his captor behind. Even as Fobar created the image of that terrific death, his captor whirled around in a lightning movement, a long arm of metal flicking outward at the same instant to drop Fobar to the ground. Like a flash Fobar was on his feet. His hand whipped from his pocket, and with all his strength he flung a gleaming

object straight toward the fifth lever on the control panel a dozen yards away. As a clumsy arrow would, his oversized bunch of keys twisted to their mark clanked and spread against the fifth control, which was the size regulator. As rapidly as Fobar's captor had spun around, it reversed again, having guessed the trick. A tentacle of pliant metal snaked toward Fobar like a streak of flame, but in those few seconds a terrific holocaust had taken place. As Fobar's keys spattered against the fifth lever, there came an immediate, growing, strange, high wine,

and a sickening collapse of the very surface beneath them. Everywhere outlines of objects wavered, changed, melted, shrank with a steady and nauseatingly swift motion. The roof of the laboratory, high overhead, plunged downward. The far-distant walls swept inward, contracted, and the metal monsters themselves dwindled as though they were vast rubber figures from which the air was hissing. Fobar sprang back as the tentacle whipped after him.

Only that jump, and the suddenly dwarving dimensions of the giant saved him. And even in that instant of wild action, Fobar shouted aloud, for this whole world was collapsing, together with everything on it, except he himself who came of a different universe and remained unaffected. It was the long shot he had gambled on, the one chance he had to strike a blow. All over the shrinking laboratory the monsters were rushing toward him. His dwindling captor flung another tentacle toward the control panel to replace the size-regulating lever, but Fobar had anticipated that possibility, and had already leaped to the switchboard, sweeping a heavy bar from his place, and crashing it down on the lever so that it could not be replaced without being repaired.

Almost in the same move, he had bounded away again, the former hundred-foot giant now scarcely more than his own height. But throughout the laboratory, the other metal things had halted in their tasks and were racing onward. Fobar always remembered that battle in the laboratory as a scene from some horrible nightmare. The catastrophe came so rapidly that he could hardly follow the whirlwind events. The half-dozen great leaps he made from the lashing tentacles of his pursuer suffice to give him a few seconds respite, and then the weird, howling sound of the tortured world swelled to a piercing wail.

His lungs were laboring from the violence of his exertions. Again and again he barely escaped from the curling whips of metal tentacles. And now the monster was hardly a foot high. The huge condensers and tubes and colossal machinery were like those of a pygmy laboratory. and overhead the roof plunged ever downward. But Fobar was cornered at last. He stood in the center of a circle of the foot-high things.

His captors suddenly shot forth a dozen rope-like arms toward him as the others closed in. He had not even a weapon, for he had dropped the bar in his first bad bound away from the control panel. He saw himself trapped in his own trick, for in minutes at most, the laboratory would be crushing him with fearful force. Blindly, Fobar reverted to a primitive defense in this moment of infinite danger and kicked with all his strength at the squat monster before him. The thing tried to whirl aside, but Fobar's shoe squashed thickly through and in a disorder of quivering pieces the metal creature fell and subsided.

Knowing at last that the invaders were of, vulnerable and how they could be killed, Fobar went leaping and stamping on those nearest him. Underfoot, they disintegrated into little pulpy lumps of inert metal. In a trice he broke beyond the circle and darted to the control panel. One quick glance showed him that the roof was now scarcely a half-dozen yards above. With fingers that fumbled in haste at tiny levers and dials, he spun six. several of them, the repulsion ray full, the attraction ray, full.

And when they were set, he picked up the bar he had dropped and smashed the controls so that they were helplessly jammed. He could almost feel the planet catapult through the heavens. The laboratory roof was only a foot over his head. He whirled around, squashed a dozen tiny creeping things, leaped to a disc that was now not more than a few inches broad. Stooping low, balancing himself precariously, he somehow managed to close the tiny switch.

A haze of orange light enveloped him. There came a great vertigo and dizziness and pain. He felt himself falling through bottomless spaces. So exhausted that he could scarcely move, Phobar blinked his eyes open to brilliant daylight, in the chill of a November Indian summer noon. The sun shone radiant in the heavens. Off in the distance, he heard a pandemonium of bells and whistles.

Wearily, he noticed that there were no flame paths in the sky. Staggering weakly he made his way to the observatory, mounted the steps with tired limbs, and wobbled to the eyepiece of his telescope which he had left focus on the dark star two hours before. Almost trembling, he peered through it. The dark star was gone. Somewhere far out in the abysses of the universe,

a runaway world plunged headlong at ever-mounting speed to uncharted regions under its double acceleration of attraction and repulsion. A sigh of contentment came from his lips as he sank into a heavy and profound sleep. Later he would learn of the readjustment. in the solar system and of the colder climate that came to Earth, and of the vast changes permanently made by the invading planet, and a blazing new star discovered in Orion that might signify the birth of a sun or the death of a metallic dark world.

But these were events to be, and he demanded his immediate reward of a day's dreamless slumber. End of Raiders of the Universes. by Donald Wendry.