Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Serie: Wonder Stories
- Sprache: Englisch
The Emperor of the Stars takes readers on an interstellar adventure filled with cosmic battles and ruthless ambitions. In a galaxy ruled by a tyrannical emperor who holds the stars in an iron grip, a small band of rebels dares to challenge his reign. As ancient prophecies stir and forgotten technologies awaken, the fate of entire worlds hangs in the balance. With dazzling space voyages, epic clashes, and a quest for freedom, this thrilling tale draws readers into a universe where power, destiny, and courage collide. A captivating story for those who dream of exploring the stars and defying the impossible.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 61
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
The Emperor of the Stars
I. — OFF COURSE
II. — THE GREEN TERRORS
III. — A SILENT DRAMA
IV. — "WE SHALL GO!"
V. — THE EMPEROR OF THE STARS
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
The Emperor of the Stars
I. — OFF COURSE
"WE'RE a quarter of a million miles off our course!"
Joe Burns looked up from the oxygenation apparatus, whose valves he had been adjusting. "That's lovely! What's happened?"
"Don't know," replied Al Fries, navigator of the first terrestrial expedition to the planet Pluto, outpost of the solar system. "We've swung that much off in the last four hours. And I can't find a damn thing wrong. Speed relative to the Sun hasn't varied from a steady thousand miles per second. Corrective side rockets have exploded regularly and the meters show full power.
"I've checked and re-checked my calculations till I'm dizzy. All correct. Didn't want to tell you till I was sure I couldn't find the error. No use bothering you, you've enough to do keeping us alive in here. Inside's your job, outside's mine. But I'm stuck now!"
They had passed Neptune in their flight, and were out in the untraveled reaches of space, midway in their journeying to the new planet.
"Two hundred and fifty thousand miles off, you say. Which way?" Burns' steady tones revealed no perturbation over the alarming news.
"Minus on the plane Alpha 45 deg. 10' 24"; on Gamma 12 deg. 10' 54"."*
*Space navigation is plotted by reference to three planes having Earth as their common intersection, One of these planes (Alpha) is determined by the plane of the ecliptic, and uses therefore the celestial sphere. The others (Beta and Gamma) are at right angles to this plane and to each other.
"Perhaps we've gotten into the attraction sphere of some unknown planet," Burns suggested.
"Impossible. Any body which could exert enough attraction to swing us so rapidly off our course against the inertia our great speed gives us would be clearly apparent to the naked eye, or at least in our telescope. There isn't any. I've looked my eyes out. Besides, I've searched every direction with the gravito-statoscope* and found no evidence of any attractive force not accounted for by known bodies. You know that instrument will respond to the attraction of a grain of dust at a distance of five hundred miles. No, Joe, there just isn't any explanation."
*An instrument for detecting new gravitational influences acting on the ship.
"Have you tried the emergency corrective rockets?"
"Sure have. Used as many as I dared. The explosions didn't have the slightest effect!"
"Hell, Al, you must be off your nut. What you tell me just can't be so. Wish I knew enough math to check your figures. Not that I haven't all the confidence in the world—I mean universe—in you, but maybe this long lonesome journey is getting at you."
Fries paled. "Do you really think that's it, Joe?"
The chemist laughed. "Oh forget it, old boy. Of course I didn't mean it. But you stop thinking along that line or it will be so. Here, let me get at that telescope—I'll find the mischief-maker."
Joe stepped smilingly to the eye-piece of the powerful electro-optical refractor. He turned one or two gleaming thumb-screws, then squinted into the tube. The smile slowly died from his face, instead a look of amazement took its place that turned to terror. His face was white. "Al, come here!" he whispered.
"What is it, what do you see?"
"Nothing."
"Then why are you looking like that?"
"I said nothing, not nothing new! I see absolutely nothing!"
"What!" Fries almost shouted. "Here, give me that 'scope."
In his turn the navigator gazed long and searchingly through the eyepiece. His bronzed face too, betrayed the blood withdrawn, called back to an affrighted heart.
IN all that vast sky, space had been swept clean! Nothing but blackness. The numberless points of dazzling lights that were great worlds and huge suns had gone as if some cosmic hand had erased them from the skies! Their staunch ship floated in total emptiness!
"Al, look here, look!" Burns, imperturbable no longer, was pointing with trembling finger to the bank of white dials.
Fries looked. The pointer of every instrument, showing their relation to some outside body, was at zero! The velocimeter, the deviatoscope, even the gravito-statoscope. None was functioning!
The two adventurers gazed at each other in blank wonderment. What could this mean? It could not be true, that they had passed beyond all other matter, that they were alone in space, that within the shell of this little space-flier was the entire material universe! Incredible!
And yet—what other explanation could there be?
While still their reeling brains strove with the problem, there was a lurch—one only—a flash of blinding light at the quartz porthole—then all was as before. But no—Joe's fingers dug into Al's arm, as with his free hand he again pointed to the banked dials.
They were functioning once again! But how! It seemed as though all these staid mathematical instruments had gone suddenly crazy.
The pointer of the velocimeter was swinging wildly against the brass pin at the zero line in an endeavor to push past it. As though it were trying to register negative velocity! The deviatoscope was wobbling in all directions at once. The gravito-statoscope was registering negative quantities, indicating tremendous repulsion.
"My God, have the instruments been put out of commission, or have we gotten into a topsy-turvy world?" cried Al, rushing to the telescope, while Joe jumped for the porthole. Simultaneous exclamations burst from both.
No longer was there the black of unlit space; but neither were there the shining points of light, the old familiar constellations spangling the velvet back drop of space. Instead they were swimming in an intense blue light deeper by far than the fairest earth sky. Against the blue were silhouetted black disks and lesser points—myriads of them.
The Earth-men stared at each other blankly. Joe spoke first. "Where are we? What has happened to us?"
Al was frankly stumped. "I don't know. This is not our world, our universe. I may be crazy but maybe we've been pushed into a different universe. That might account for the strange gyrations of our instruments." He warmed to the idea. "After all, there's something in that. According to Einstein our space, our universe, is curved around into an enormous sphere. True, he assumes that there is absolutely nothing inside or outside that sphere, not even emptiness.
"But suppose he were wrong. Suppose that there are other universes, all spheres of space, floating in a great super-space. Suppose that one of these sphere universes in some manner impinged on our space, tangentially. Through a freak of fortune we happened to hit that one spot. Since the two spaces touch, we went hurtling from our own familiar universe into this strange one, the existence of which has never even been dreamt of by our scientists."
