Three Nullifiers were built and two were deployed almost immediately, guarded by the planet-wreckers of the weapons locker and the best automated defenses the Com had. They resembled giant radar antennas, over fifteen kilometers across, and were constructed of thin, metallic fabric. When folded for travel the devices were able to keep pace with the fastest Com ships.
True to form, the Dreel allowed the attacking Com fleet to approach unmolested; Com forces penetrated the perimeter with no opposition. Only when the corridor could be effectively closed behind them did the attack begin.
The umbrellalike dishes had been deployed long before. Suddenly the Com forces slowed, inviting attack. The location of the Dreel main force and its central command world was known because the Dreel believed in commanding from the forward edge of the battle area, to be seen but not to be reached, advancing with the forward units.
The incredibly fast needle shapes of the Dreel ships closed on the fleet from all sides in a flash; they were ready. The two Zinder Nullifiers were deployed back to back; each could sweep one hundred eighty degrees. The balance of the Com force floated between the two projectors.
The Com fleet waited. Hoped. At the speed of the Dreel fighters, human control was out of the question— computers alone could manage the necessary nanosecond response time. The crews could only monitor their screens while the Dreel closed, then suffer the jolts and unexpected accelerations as the automated defenses took over; the projector crews experienced pulsed vibrations as very short bursts of Zinder feedback were used.
Then the Dreel just weren’t there any more. Not only did they vanish suddenly, but so did all other matter within the disks’ foci. Light, even gravity vanished, annihilated; briefly a great hole opened around the task force, one in which absolutely nothing, not even a hard vacuum, existed. A scientist checked his instruments, frowned. “That shouldn’t have happened. The device was to annihilate matter, not energy.”
Scientists fell to, trying to locate the flaw. The military didn’t care; their forces were committed and the thing worked. The task force accelerated and headed for the known command center of the Dreel. Meanwhile Dreel counterattacks not only continued, their intensity increased. As yet the Dreel had no idea of the danger they faced, could not understand what was involved.
The unwanted total annihilation was observed dozens of times before the science monitors had doped the problem out: Their relatively puny computers were unable to discriminate properly between matter and energy, and the violet ray was not fully controlled. The device had been designed for transmutation and re-creation by Zinder, not as disintegration weapon. Without the supercomputer the carrier was wild; it nullified everything it struck. Everything.
“We’re tearing a hole in the fabric of space-time itself!” one of the scientists exclaimed. “Thanks to the pulsed field we’ve been able to let things repair themselves—but sustained nullification on a huge scale might be beyond nature’s ability to counteract!”
“The Markovian brain might not be able to handle such a huge gap,” another agreed. “The rip might be impossible to close!”
They rushed to communicators to warn the military leaders who made the decisions, but the military’s response was an unexpected one. “We have lost almost a third of the Com; we face certain destruction. This is the
As its forces simply winked out of existence, the Dreel Set did what any intelligent beings would do. They started a retreat, withdrawing as quickly as possible. For the bulk of their forces this was simple because they were faster than anything the Com could muster. But for the mother ship, an artificial planetoid over ten thousand kilometers in diameter, such flight was not possible. While the mother ship could attain the speeds required, powering up and the preparations necessary to prevent killing all aboard would take perhaps three days. In its present shape the mother ship was not as fast as the Com ships pursuing it.
Due to the limitations of their power sources, the Zinder Nullifiers had an effective range of under one light- year; they had closed to within a parsec of their quarry when it started to move.
The Dreel knew they could not outdistance the Nullifiers, but those aboard the task force did not.
“Turn the forward disk on and keep it on, aimed at the Dreel mother ship, unless needed for defense,” ordered the military men; the military computers agreed that it was the only thing to do.
A hole opened before the Com task force, a hole in space—time. Not having enough experience to appreciate the effect of the Nullifiers, the fleet officers suddenly discovered that they could no longer see their quarry on the other side of the hole. Even light was destroyed—
Scientists all over the task force held their breath.
Something winked, momentarily producing an effect like a photographic negative, then there was nothing, not even Nullifiers.
The hole, though, didn’t stop; it expanded in all directions, devouring everything in its path. The Dreel mother ship was caught when the hole was barely a light-year wide; it devoured two stars and their attendant planetary systems within five days. And it kept growing. And at its center was nothing.
Gramanch, a Planet in the Galaxy M51
The blue-white expanse of Gramanch Spread below the shuttle as it rose toward a small and not very imposing moon. Gramanch had several moons, most no more than cratered rock and airless wastes and none larger than three thousand kilometers around. The shuttle’s destination was smaller than that but different in that it was a private moon acclimatized for its owners and not very natural at all. It was said that they had snared an asteroid, refurbished it as one would an old spaceship, added a drive, and moved it into orbit. Certainly it had not been there even a year.
Approaching it one could easily see the differences. One hemisphere was protected by some kind of energy shield that gave it the appearance of slightly opaque plastic; there were signs of greenery beneath, and of clouds.
The other hemisphere was harder to make out but as the shuttle approached the surface could be seen. It was pitted but not as cratered as the other moons. Only a huge concave dish whose metal ribs gleamed in the sunlight indicated that this must be the area of the space drive.
The Gramanch were a spacefaring race; they were expanding and had managed to do so without conflict, although there were some uneasy moments with several of the nonhuman spacefaring races they had encountered. The people of Gramanch were small, barely a meter tall, swaddled in long sable fur from which faces like miniature lions or Pekinese dogs peered. They were unusual in that they walked on all fours but sat on hind legs when they wanted to use their thin, delicate, ape-like, fingers with opposable thumbs. They were like some sort of impossibly furry kangaroos balanced on thick thighs and curled yet muscular, furry tails.
The ship docked easily and the passengers felt slightly lighter than they had been. The difference was enough to put a spring in their step, but not enough to be uncomfortable.
Their hostess, a striking female whose flaming orange fur was tinged with gray and white, greeted them as they debarked: “Welcome, welcome to
They trotted happily after her, thirty-four in all, taking in the strange little world beyond the tiny two-ship- terminal.
It was green and beautiful. Grass was everywhere, and they could see copses of alien trees off to the left. The buildings, too, were alien, but were somehow pleasing and not a little imposing. Strange birds flitted through air that was exceptionally invigorating and pleasant; flowers, familiar and alien, grew everywhere; here and there small animals scurried to and fro. They passed beautifully manicured gardens and fountains spurting crystal-clear water. Amid this bucolic wonder the hostess stopped, turned, sat up and faced the crowd.
