The Star Virus

"All right," he agreed reluctantly, and prepared to make the maneuver. Unobstrusively they slipped behind a floating wreck, then while masked from the Streall watchers, switched to main drive. In minutes the Stator's silent, mysterious mode of propulsion had whisked them to safety.

Out of curiosity they began to tune in at random to space-tensor broadcasts. Everywhere the story was the same. Fighting, battles, landings on alien planets. All over the Hub the tension between man and Streall had broken into open war as the two races locked in a titanic struggle. The news filled Rodrone with a sense of dread. He had expected it to happen gradually. The suddenness of events made him feel like an incendiarist.

Still, he told himself, now man would never be intimidated.

For some reason he felt even more anxious to see his wife.

A few weeks later they pulled into the Land system. Rodrone's joy increased as he saw the gentle violet sun and found the traceries of eleven planets on the miraculous picture-plate behind the desk console. On one of those traces, the fourth from the sun, lived his wife.

But as they penetrated deep into the system he knew that something was wrong. The planet seventh from the sun was smoking. Lurid streams of poisonous vapor rolled out from it into space as it moved in its orbit, the deadly pyre of what had once been a fair world of fifty million inhabitants.

Horrified, he moved closer in to the sixth and seventh worlds. They, too, were blasted lifeless, their atmospheres transformed into radioactive soups. His brief inspection of them brought his anxiety to certainty. After that, he moved on to Sunder almost as a matter of formality.

Jermy and Jublow were with him in the control gallery when they edged close to the planet and Rodrone was able to see it for himself. The Streall had come and gone, blasting the Land system to hell. Sunder was ravaged, blackened, practically ripped apart and scorched down to the very rock mantle. It was inconceivable that even a bacterium could still be alive down there.

Jermy looked at the sight and grinned. "Another dead 'un, eh, Captain?"

Rodrone's fists clenched convulsively. Seeing the expression on his face, Jermy added, "It's happening all over, Chief. All over the Hub, on our side and theirs. Don'tcha remember? We picked up lots of pictures."

"Yeah!" Jublow butted in with little-boy glee. "Lots of planets blowing up!"

Rodrone felt an impulse to kill them both, but he restrained himself and nodded absently. He could hardly expect a deadliner to grieve over either death or parting.

X

Counters clicked and hummed. In the distance, the atomic explosion flared briefly like a lighted match, sending an expanding wave of light and radiation into the eternal night. Patiently Rodrone waited for the debris of released energy to disperse, then the Stator moved silently in, probing with its radar fingers.

A tight little dot appeared on the radar screen, traveling swiftly to zenith-east from the force of the explosion. Effortlessly the Stator tracked it, closed in, extended waldo arms.

Rodrone sighed. The lens was intact. No radiation, no signs of burning, not even a hairline crack on its glossy surface. Spinning unconcernedly in space, it displayed its never-ending picture show to the void.

Apparently the lens was indestructible. Appalled by the fate of the Land planets, appalled by the tales of holocaust that reached them every day from all over the Hub, he had come to the conclusion that it must not be allowed to exist.

In the past weeks he had tried everything. He had tried explosives, he had tried to dissolve it in acids, and he had tried to burn it away in an electric arc. But nothing worked. "Maybe it's right, boss," Feeldonet said as they hauled the undamaged lens inboard. "Maybe it should exist. Remember how it influences events. What would happen if we did destroy it?"

Feeldonet was the most intelligent of the deadliners. By watching the Streall technician he had learned the knack of understanding the Stator's drive, and having only recently joined the crew, he was not quite as far gone as the others. In fact, if he had not taken ship aboard the Stator he might eventually have overcome the personal tragedies that had made him turn his back on normal life. But there was no chance of a recovery among the company he kept now.