To Outer Space

by WE Johns

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Alien Contact; Space Exploration

Synopsis

Tiger Clinton and his crew return for more adventures in the distant stars!

With their allies from space, they travel first to Mars to see the results of their aid, and then onwards - further into the unknown.

Stumbling across a peaceful planet, however, the explorers and their shop the Tavona find themselves in the middle of an invasion by aliens with superior firepower. Can they use Earth's technology to help? Or are even they outmatched by this unknown foe?

Best know for his Biggles series, Captain W.E. Johns' space adventures are perfect for fans of classic Star Trek and pulp science fiction!

Release date: November 29, 2022

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

‘What are you looking so serious about?’ Group-Captain ‘Tiger’ Clinton put the question to his son.

‘I was wondering,’ answered Rex, vaguely, turning his eyes away from a fast-diminishing globe of light below the spaceship, the planet from which they had departed a few hours earlier. As a traveller on Earth, setting out on a voyage, takes a last look at his native land, perhaps a little fearful that he might never see it again, so Rex had regarded the world he called his own.

‘What were you wondering?’ inquired Tiger, possibly for the sake of making conversation, to pass the time now that the long run to Mars was fairly begun.

Rex smiled wanly. ‘If the people at home are any happier for knowing that their world, instead of being flat as they once supposed, is round. That the blue moon the crooners moan about is merely a lump of dirt. That a diamond is only a piece of carbon, a pearl a bit of lime, and a rose just a lot of atoms of this, that and the other.’

‘If you’re going to talk like that,’ put in Doctor ‘Toby’ Paul, ‘are they any happier living in a house, with everything laid on, instead of a cave, aware that an enemy on the other side of the world could, if he so wished, reduce them to atoms with a hydrogen bomb?’

‘The point I was making,’ returned Rex, ‘is this. Assuming that happiness is the thing everyone is looking for, are people any nearer to it than they were, say, five hundred years ago, before chemists started to take everything to pieces to find out what it’s made of? Does it matter what things are made of as long as we have them to enjoy?’

Brushing back his lank hair the Professor gazed at Rex over his spectacles. ‘I see you’re becoming quite a philosopher. Mortals cannot have everything. The physical discomforts which, knowing no better, they once endured, have been exchanged for mental discomfort, fear of the present and uneasiness for the future. For the mechanical toys they now possess they bartered their peace of mind, and as apparently you suspect, lost on the transaction, getting farther away from true happiness instead of nearer to it. They demanded, and still demand, too much. Unless someone soon puts the brakes on they will end by having nothing.’

‘For which they have the scientists to blame,’ murmured Rex, softly.

‘Not at all. Scientists and engineers merely gave the people what they, like children, were crying for. Not satisfied with a beautiful world they now demand the Moon. Very soon, no doubt, they will have it.’

‘Having seen it at close quarters I hope they enjoy it,’ said Rex, cynically.

‘It wasn’t the people who wanted the Moon,’ asserted Tiger. ‘The scientists started that nonsense.’

‘I was not speaking literally,’ stated the Professor, with a tinge of asperity. ‘Considering what you yourself are doing at this moment you should not criticize the people who made it possible. After all, you are here from choice, not compulsion.’

‘I wasn’t thinking so much of space travel as these atom-busting thermonuclear experiments,’ explained Tiger.

‘You know my views on that,’ rejoined the Professor. ‘When men were wise instead of being merely clever there was a saying that curiosity killed the cat. It was, no doubt, like all old sayings, based on human experience. The curiosity of a certain type of scientist will in the end destroy him, and everyone else. In his delight at having discovered the atoms of which Earth is composed he now amuses himself by breaking them.’

‘Regardless of the people on other planets who have an interest in this matter,’ put in Vargo, the Martian, in his thin, precise voice. He had been listening to the conversation. ‘Such folly is not to be believed. Don’t they realize that should Earth be vaporized, or even moved in its orbit, the whole Solar System, as you call it, would be involved in a catastrophe beyond imagination? They are asking for a repetition of the horror that followed the fragmentation of Kraka. Other worlds are watching these explosions with alarm. These rockets you have been sending up are a menace to everyone. Ships, which you call Saucers, have been sent to watch, and have, I believe, been observed from Earth. Now, you tell me, it is proposed to create artificial satellites, to the peril of all space travellers. You have become the most dangerous planet in the galaxy, and if you continue, your people will have to be destroyed for the safety of others. That is the argument of Rolto, and many now believe him. Why do your scientists do this?’

‘To find out what is beyond our atmosphere,’ answered the Professor.

‘You could tell them.’

‘They would not believe me.’

‘I, as a man of Mars, could tell them.’

‘They would not believe you, either. Don’t forget that Rolto, the only Martian to land on Earth, was put under restraint as a madman for making such a claim.’

‘We could show them a spaceship, and demonstrate it.’

The Professor shook his head. ‘It is too early for that, for which reason I have said nothing about my voyages. No man could say what effect the shock of knowing there are other peoples in the Universe would have on our civilization. All beliefs, in the past, the present and the future, would crumble, and the result would be chaos. At present, on Earth, the people are afraid only of each other. Fear of attack from space might throw them into a panic, or a state of despair.’

‘They are inviting such an attack.’

‘It would be no use telling them that.’

‘They will have to know one day.’

‘It will come with time. At present only a few have the intelligence to grasp the meaning of space travel, and all that it involves.’

‘It is not easy,’ conceded Vargo. ‘In early space travel the most difficult thing is to remove from the mind comparisons with other forms of what you call speed, or velocity. There is no comparison. People must accustom themselves to think of movement faster even than that of light. That is the first step,’

‘How did you do that?’ asked Rex.

‘It comes from a study of the stars. Once they are understood the impossible at once becomes possible.’

‘What do you mean, exactly?’

‘Let us put it like this. Every star, every planet, including your Earth, is moving through space faster than it is possible to imagine. You may say, truly, I know that Earth is half a million miles away from where it was at this time yesterday. That is hard for the brain to accept. Yet it is only the beginning. It is even harder to imagine anything moving faster than light. Yet that is slow compared with some movements in the Universe. The day came when our scientists said, if a great body of matter like a star can travel faster than light, why not a small, man-made body? So they made what you call a spaceship.’

‘That was a big jump forward,’ said the Professor.

‘But you did that yourself, with your first ship, the Spacemaster. It was, like all first things, a crude device; and a dangerous one, as was demonstrated when it broke up. But it was a step in the right direction.’

The Professor smiled sadly at the memory.

‘Space travel is not difficult,’ continued Vargo. ‘Making allowances for the strain of initial acceleration, it is only necessary to place an object within the power of the forces that govern the Universe, by which I mean gravity, cosmic and other rays, to move with them. The longer the journey the swifter can become the movement. There is no known limit to velocity.’

‘Having advanced from twenty miles an hour to a thousand, by Earthly terms of measurement, in a mere hundred years, we are beginning to realize that,’ said the Professor, soberly.

Vargo continued. ‘Just as you, at this moment, are unconscious of movement, so, from what you have told me, are the people of Earth unaware of the velocity of the world on which they stand.’

‘I would not say that. They are told, but the brain does not comprehend, probably because their lives are not affected.’

‘Yet the slightest variation in momentum would hurl them all to destruction.’

‘They are not concerned with that, and rightly so, for should such a thing occur they would know nothing about it; so why worry? I doubt if some of them would believe it, anyway.’

‘Exactly. Disaster on such a scale is too fantastic for belief. It is hard to prove these things. If they cannot be understood they must be accepted.’

‘Generally speaking, our civilization has not yet reached a full understanding of these tremendous – one might also say – terrifying – possibilities,’ averred the Professor.

‘What is this thing you call civilization?’

The Professor thought for a moment. ‘It is a state on that part of the Earth most advanced in art and science.’

A shadow of a smile, a somewhat, cynical smile, softened Vargo’s taciturn features. ‘Yet, from what you have told me, these are the areas of the greatest confusion, where men are constantly at war.’

The Professor sighed. ‘I must confess that is true.’

‘And now, to turn confusion into chaos, your scientists behave like little boys with hammers. They must break something. I fear you still have a long way to go to reach real civilization.’

‘We have come a long way.’

‘Too fast. That is your trouble. Science must proceed with caution or it will take more than it gives, as you yourself have said. How old is your scientific knowledge?’

‘Perhaps two or three hundred years.’

‘There are planets,’ said Vargo, with slow deliberation, ‘such as Ando, where you wish to go, where scientific thought has been developing for how long no man knows. Thousands of years. Perhaps tens of thousands. The end of yours, as you now proceed, is in sight. Thus claims Rolto, who would destroy you before you destroy others. It is a thought on which you would do well to ponder.’

‘Are you telling us that the degree of scientific progress on a planet depends upon its age?’

‘No. Neither age nor size bear any relation to the birth of intelligence in the creatures that dwell on it. That includes the species you call man, should it be there; although, to be sure, it often is, perhaps in a very low form. Sometimes the dominant form of life is something quite different. It can be what you would call an insect, or a reptile; but where man appears he invariably, sooner or later, assumes command. At what period he ceases to behave like an animal seems to be a matter of chance.’

‘Do you mean it is in the nature of an accident?’ queried Rex.

‘You might call it that,’ answered Vargo. ‘Put it like this. What you call civilization can only begin when a man is born who employs his hands and brain to do something that has never been done before. Let us say he makes a tool, or a weapon. Why this should happen is in the nature of a mystery. Parents are not responsible, for they can only pass on to their children what they themselves know. However, once such an invention appears other men copy it. One day a man improves on this weapon, or tool, and from that moment begins the slow process which produces men like us, able to invent a vehicle such as the one we are in. Your Earth is aeons of ages old, yet, as you have told me, your records go back only for five or six thousand years. For millions of years, therefore, Earthmen must have remained unchanged, each succeeding generation making little or no progress on the previous one. That is not unusual. There are men nearer to animals than any you saw on your last trip. They have got no further than making hunting tools of stone.’

‘Earth went through a Stone Age,’ said Rex.

‘All worlds go through it before they reach the Age of Metals,’ declared Vargo. ‘Thereafter the course their development takes depends on local conditions, what is needed and what is available. Of course, all people out of touch with others, knowing nothing better than what they have, believe themselves to be the most highly civilized – as you do on Earth. But all this ends when space flight is achieved and new worlds are open for comparison. Then one world learns from others. There may be exceptions to this rule, however.’

‘Why should that be?’ asked Toby.

‘Because, as it seems, some men cannot think for themselves and will not learn from others. Such a world is Marlok, which I could show you, for it is within our galaxy. It is much larger than Earth, and I would say older, yet the man species there live like animals, awaiting that spark of intelligence that will set them on the road to culture. They have physical strength beyond belief and can cast great stones with accuracy, but nothing more. Their bodies grow but not their brains. . .