The Project Gutenberg EBook of Raiders of the Universes, by Donald Wandrei

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Title: Raiders of the Universes

Author: Donald Wandrei

Release Date: July 12, 2009 [EBook #29389]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: _He somehow managed to close the tiny switch._]

Raiders of the Universes

By Donald Wandrei

Childlike, the great astronomer
Phobar stands before the metallic
invaders of the ravished solar
system.

It was in the thirty-fourth century that the dark star began its famous
conquest, unparalleled in stellar annals. Phobar the astronomer
discovered it. He was sweeping the heavens with one of the newly
invented multi-powered Sussendorf comet-hunters when something caught
his eye--a new star of great brilliance in the foreground of the
constellation Hercules.

For the rest of the night, he cast aside all his plans and concentrated
on the one star. He witnessed an unprecedented event. Mercia's
nullifier had just been invented, a curious and intricate device, based
on four-dimensional geometry, that made it possible to see occurrences
in the universe which had hitherto required the hundreds of years needed
for light to cross the intervening space before they were visible on
Earth. By a hasty calculation with the aid of this invention, Phobar
found that the new star was about three thousand light-years distant,
and that it was hurtling backward into space at the rate of twelve
hundred miles per second. The remarkable feature of his discovery was
this appearance of a fourth-magnitude star where none had been known to
exist. Perhaps it had come into existence this very night.

On the succeeding night, he was given a greater surprise. In line with
the first star, but several hundred light-years nearer, was a second new
star of even more brightness. And it, too, was hurtling backward into
space at approximately twelve hundred miles per second. Phobar was
astonished. Two new stars discovered within twenty