Return to the Stars

as this one... the ability to disappear. That was why there were phantoms in the fleet of every kingdom.

'It'd be safer to dark-out,' said Hull Burrel, frowning. 'But then we'd be running blind ourselves, and I don't like doing that in this mess.'

Gordon thought that if it was a mess, it was an impressive one. Scores of stars burned like great emerald and ruby and diamond lamps in the dark gloom. The radar screen showed shoals of drift between these star-systems, and here and there the Marches were rifted by great darkness, loops and lanes of cosmic dust.

He looked back the way they had come, at the Hercules Cluster that blazed like bright moths swarming thick about a lamp, at the far dimmed spark of Canopus. He hoped they would live to go back there. He looked ahead and his imagination leaped beyond the stars he could see to those out on the Rim, the spiral, outlying arms of stars that fringed the wheeling galaxy, and beyond which there was nothing until the distant Magellanic Clouds.

'It's too far,' he said to Hull. 'Zarth Arn must be wrong; there can't really be Magellanians in the Marches. If they had come they wouldn't have come as stealthy infiltrators, but in a great invasion.'

Hull Burrel shook his head. 'They came that way once before, so the histories say. And they got annihilated, when Brenn Bir used the Disrupter on them. They might try a different way, this time.' The big Antarian captain added, 'But I can't believe it, either. It was so long ago.'

For a long time the little phantom threaded its way into the Marches, skirting great areas of drift that flowed like rivers through space, tacking and twisting its way around enormous ashen dark stars, swinging far wide of inhabited systems.

Finally there came a time when, peering at the viewer, Hull Burrel pointed out a small, bright orange star glittering far away.

'That's it. The sun of Aar.'

Gordon looked. 'And now?'

'Now we dark-out,' grunted the Antarian. 'And from here on it'll be cursed ticklish navigation.'

He gave an order. An alarm rang through the ship. The big dark-out generators aft began droning loudly. At that moment all the viewer-screens and radar-screens went dark and blank.

Gordon had been in phantoms before, and had expected the phenomenon. The generators had created an aura of powerful force around the little ship, which force slightly refracted every light ray or radar beam that struck it. The phantom had become completely invisible both to eye and to radar, but by the same token those in it could see nothing outside. Navigation now must be by the special sub-spectrum radar by which the phantom could slowly feel a way forward.

In the time that followed, Gordon thought it was remarkably like a twentieth-century submarine feeling its way through ocean depths. There was the same feeling of blindness and semi-helplessness, the same dread of collision, in this case with some bit of drift the straining radar might not catch, and the same half-hysterical desire to see sunlight again. And the ordeal went on and on, the sweat standing out in fine beads on Hull Burrel's forehead as he jockeyed the little ship closer toward the single planet of the orange star.

Finally, Hull gave an order and the ship hung motionless. He turned his glistening face toward Gordon.

'We should be just above the surface of Aar, but that's all I can say. I hope to God we don't come out of dark-out right over our enemies' heads!'

Gordon shrugged. 'Jon Ollen said there wasn't much on this world, that it was mostly wild.'

'One thing I love is an optimist who has no direct responsibility,' growled the Antarian. 'All right. Dark-out off!'

The droning of generators died. Instantly there poured into the bridge through the viewer screens a flood of orange sunlight. They peered out tensely, blinking in the brilliance.

'I apologize, optimist,' said Hull. 'It couldn't be better.'

The little ship hung level with the top foliage of a golden forest. The plants... Gordon could not think of them as trees, although they were that big... were thirty to forty feet high, graceful clusters of dark-green stems whose branches held masses of feathery golden-yellow leaves. They bore a remote but disquieting resemblance to the trees of Teyn and Gordon shivered, hoping it was not an omen. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but the roof of the forest glittering in the light of the orange sun.

'Take her down fast,' ordered Hull. 'We could just be ranged by radar up here.'

The phantom dropped through the masses of lacy gold and landed in a grove of clustered stems, upon soft ground covered with a copper-colored brush that bore black fruits.

Gordon, peering fascinated through the viewer, suddenly shouted. 'Something!'

The Antarian jumped to his side. 'What?'

'It's gone now,' said Gordon. 'Something small, almost invisible, that darted away under the brush.'

The other looked doubtful. 'In the star-log, this world Aar is listed as uninhabited. An attempt was once made to colonize it but the colonists were driven away from it by dangerous conditions. This could be some formidable creature.'

Gordon was doubtful. 'It seemed too small.'

'Nevertheless, we'd better have a look around before we go thrashing through these forests,' the Antarian said decisively. He spoke to the crewmen in the bridge. 'You and I will go out, Varren. Full armor.'

Gordon shook his head. 'I'll go with Varren. One of us has to stay to complete the mission if something happens to the other... and the one who stays had better be the one who can navigate the ship back out of here.'

When Gordon and Varren stepped out of the ship they wore the suits that did double duty as space suits and defensive armor, complete with helmets. They carried guns.

Looking uncertainly around, Gordon began to feel a bit foolish. Nothing moved except the golden foliage high above, waving in the breeze. His helmet sound-pickup brought no sounds except the faint sounds of a forest.

'Where was this thing you saw?' asked Varren. His voice was very polite.

'Over this way,' Gordon said. 'I don't know... it could have been a leaf blowing...'

He suddenly stopped, looking upward. Twelve feet above the ground, fastened solidly inside a crotch of one of the trees, was a curious structure vaguely resembling a squirrel's summer nest. Except that this was no ragged thing of twigs and leaves but a solid little box of cut wood, with a door in its side.

'It was going toward this place,' said Gordon. 'Look.'

Varren looked. He looked up for a long time and then he remarked quietly that he would be damned.

'I'm climbing up there to take a look,' said Gordon. 'If it's what I thought I saw, it won't be too dangerous. If not... cover me.'

The climb would not have been difficult if it had not been for the clumsy suit. But he was sweating by the time he reached a crotch on which he could stand with his face level with the little box.

Gently, Gordon pushed at the little door. A faint snapping told of a tiny catch breaking. He continued to push but it was difficult... something, someone, was holding the door on the inside.

Then the resistance gave way, and Gordon looked inside. At first he could see nothing but a purple gloom. But the hot orange sunlight pouring in through the open door revealed detail as his eyes adjusted.

Those who had been trying to hold the door against him now cowered in terror at the far side of a little room. They were not much more than a foot high and they were quite human in shape. They were naked, one man, one woman, and the only strange thing about them apart from their size was the fact that their bodies were semitransparent, as translucent as plastic. He could see details of the wall-surface right through them.

They cowered, and Gordon stared, and then he heard the man speaking in a tiny voice. He could hardly hear, but it was not a language he knew.

After a long moment he slid back to the ground. He pointed upward and said to Varren, 'Take a look. Maybe you can understand their language.'

'Their what?' said Varren. He looked at Gordon as though he doubted his sanity. Then he too climbed up.

It was a long time before Varren came back down. When he did, he looked sick.

'I talked with them,' he said, and then repeated that as though he didn't quite believe it. 'I talked with them. Oh, yes, I could understand them. You see, a few thousand years ago they were our own people.'

Gordon looked at him incredulously. 'Those creatures? But...'

'The colonists,' said Varren. 'The ones Captain Burrel read about in the log, who were driven away from here