Read Ebook: The Conquest of Canada Vol. 1 by Warburton George

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 505 lines and 90330 words, and 11 pages

THE MONSTER THAT THREATENED THE UNIVERSE

From Chaos a space-consuming creature reached slimy tentacles toward trembling planets. And no man of the old fighting breed remained on effete Earth to battle the invulnerable monster.

Limio hugged the dying fires of Chaos. He was not cold, for the fires that burned in the center of the cold star were not dead, only dying. But they were the source of life to the monster who lived in the depths of a black hole of space.

The Black Hole, about thirty degrees from the solar quadrant in the terrestrial galaxy, was not dark, but twilight to Limio, whose eyes were sensitive to infra-red radiation. These eyes, hundreds of them floating on huge cranial bumps that dotted the thousands of miles of his massive body, caught the ruddy glow of a rocket ship entering The Black Hole.

Limio grunted. These iron creatures were hard to crack, but inside their hulls were juicy tidbits of carbon and oxygen in various combinations. It had seemed to Limio that these tasty morsels were alive; that they might even possess intelligence. Of course, it would be hard to conceive of anything so small having much intelligence, but Limio had run across strange things in the universe in his millions of years of existence.

Limio had come to Chaos a single spore. He had grown into a slimy, reptilian, nauseating mass, the supreme hideosity in a warp of creation. His body lacked form, except as a tenuous syrupy blanket covering a fourth of the surface of Chaos. Here and there in the skin of this monster were toothed craters ready to devour any carbon molecule that might fall from space. Food was not important to Limio, for it only made him grow. The energy of the inner fires of Chaos supplied the needs of his existence. He ate simply to destroy, for Limio wanted no competitive form of life on Chaos. Competition might mean death and Limio loved his immortality.

The rocket ship drew nearer. Limio saw that it had guns. Limio knew these guns. Once before he had met a rocket ship equipped with neutron blasters. Limio had received a hole in his body that had taken a century to heal. Limio had been unprepared then, but this time he was ready.

He tapped the inner fires of energy. A warm glow softened his body. The network of nerves that formed his brain threw out a web of magnetic energy. The toothed craters in his skin yawned expectantly.

The intelligence behind the controls of the ship spotted Chaos. It circled the dying sun. Searchlights stabbed downward toward the surface. Limio's sensitive nerves tingled as radio energy lashed out rhythmically from the craft. It was signaling, probably.

Suddenly from the surface of the star a long, tenuous arm shot out. It was fifty miles long and five miles in diameter. It leaped from the surface with mile a second velocity, aiming a blow at the space ship that could have pounded it to junk, had it landed.

But the pilot saw the blow and dodged out of the way. The tentacle snapped back. Again Limio tingled with radio energy. His brain caught the rhythm and deciphered the thought:

"It is a living world. It seems to be a vicious animal. Just now it attacked--"

"And I will attack again!" whispered Limio's brain in the same magnetic rhythm of the impulses that flowed from the ship.

Again the arm shot out toward the ship's hull. Once more the alert pilot dodged in time.

"Who are you?" asked the space ship, in the rhythm Limio had begun to understand.

"I am Limio," replied the monster. "Who are you, metal monster?"

"I have never heard of the solar system, but I have seen others like you in my time. I have never had trouble destroying one of your kind. Go away. Leave me alone, or I shall kill you."

"That is not our policy. We are men. We have principles. Our principles demand that you be destroyed as a menace to space navigation."

"Why?"

"Because you interfere with progress. We know now why ships that enter The Black Hole never return. We intend to put an end to this wanton and useless destruction."

"If you do not go away, I will kill you," said Limio. "But if you creatures who call yourselves men leave me alone, I will leave you alone."

"We can't leave you alone because your principles are not the same as ours. You stand in the way of progress. You are hideous. You are a monster. You must be destroyed."

"You are unbeauteous yourself, but no doubt you are in your early stages of development. But I do not kill for esthetic reasons. I simply want to be left alone. Go away."

"Perhaps your idea of progress is different from mine," Limio said. "To me, progress is synonymous with growth."

"To us, progress means growth of mind; development of resources; betterment of human institutions and relationships."

"Then your idea of progress is nothing at all," Limio said. "I have seen many forms of life, even some of your own forms, and I have never seen a mind whose growth was not limited by hereditary conditions which tend to progress in nature's own way; nature alone can develop resources--you simply take them away from nature; and if human relations are governed by this philosophy it is better that the human race does not progress, although it will in spite of itself. Now that we understand each other, please go away."

But Limio had met men before and he was prepared for the niceties of their means of destruction. His web-like brain cast off magnetic force to shield his body. The magnetism swerved the neutrons from their path, doubled them back on their course until the yellow flame touched the sides of the space ship itself.

There was a single explosive puff. The darkness of The Black Hole returned.

Commander General Adstrom, president of the terrestrial Congress, surveyed the two men who stood in front of him. One was an officer in uniform, while the other was a pale-faced, poorly dressed person.

The commander general addressed the officer.

"Is--is this a--a criminal?" he asked.

The pale-faced young man watched with evident amusement.

"The gland extracts have been most effective during the past ten years, sir," the officer said. "This is the only law violator we've been able to find."

Commander General Adstrom shook his head. "We should have known when to stop with those gland extracts," he declared. "We sought to destroy criminality and we did. But we also destroyed creativeness, originality, individuality. I hoped that the gland extract would not affect everyone. I expected that some individualists would remain and that we could find him among the criminal classes. But there are no criminal classes!"

"This man is a criminal. His name is Marmaduke Karns. Perhaps you remember the trial not long ago. It was quite a sensation."

"Marmaduke Karns? The name is familiar." The commander general appraised the young man. "What crime did he commit?"

"He synthesized teakwood without a permit, sir."

"I got thirty days, too!" Marmaduke Karns added proudly. "They treated me royally in jail. It was the first job the jailer has had in ten years."

"Did you take the gland extract?" Commander General asked.

Marmaduke nodded.

"There's something funny about that, too, sir," the officer interrupted. "Karns was given a test in jail and the gland extract was found in his veins, but there also was a trace of another substance. An antidote, sir!"

Marmaduke's face grew paler. The commander general eyed his prisoner seriously.

"You know it's a capital offense to take an antidote to the extract?" the commander general asked.

"I'm standing on my Constitutional rights," Marmaduke said. "I want a lawyer."

"I didn't know there was an antidote," the commander general said. "It seems that the antidote probably will be, in your case, a great boon to the universe. Have you got any more of it?"

"I'm still standing on my Constitutional rights," Marmaduke said. "The stuff--and I'm not admitting anything--is a secret."

"You can feel perfectly free to talk," the commander general said. "Nothing you say will go beyond these walls. Furthermore, one difficulty we are up against is that of finding an executioner, even if you were convicted and sentenced to death for manufacturing an antidote to the extract. There's not a human being on earth who would take another man's life, even legally."

"I know," Marmaduke said. "That's why I invented the stuff and took it. Now I'm in the position of a superman. I've got a monopoly on originality, individuality and creativeness in the world. If I revealed my antidote, I'd not have a monopoly."

"We can still put you in jail," the commander general reminded.

"The world would beat a pathway to my cell," Marmaduke replied. "I wouldn't stay in jail long."

Commander General Adstrom was confronted with a serious problem. Marmaduke Karns represented a one-man revolution that could not be suppressed. The commander general might call out the army, the navy, the airforce and the spaceforce, but not a human being would kill Karns, because the gland extract had made it psychologically impossible for one human being to kill another. As long as Karns were alive, whether he be in jail or free, Karns was bound to climb to the top of the heap.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet