FINAL GLORY

                            By HENRY HASSE

              The Sun was dying--and with it the System.
               Earth was a cold stone. Survivors huddled
                on a cheerless Mercury, waiting numbly.
                 But Praav in his inscrutable wisdom--

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Spring 1947.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


N'Zik was a forlorn and weary figure at the forward port. He balanced
his frail, bulbous body on four of his eight limbs, while the other
four moved listlessly over the etheroscope, adjusting sights and
lenses. N'Zik wondered dully why he bothered. Even from here he could
see that the system looking ahead, the dull reddish Sun with its wild
and darksome planets, was not for them.

Bitterness flooded his soul. To have come so far and searched so
long, only to find this! In all this Galaxy here was the one Sun that
sustained a planetary system, and that Sun was dying! The irony was
more than he could bear.

Shi-Zik came to stand beside him. Only she and N'Zik were left, of all
the thousands; two alone on this driving colossus which was the only
world they had ever known. She sensed his bitterness now and tried to
speak words of hope.

"See, N'Zik, there are inner planets! How close their orbits are! There
may still be warmth and life-sustaining rays."

N'Zik's limbs sprawled outward in despair.

"This dying system is not for us, Shi-Zik. The five largest and
outermost planets are but barren, frigid rock. But if you wish, we
shall go inward."

His limbs flashed over the huge control-console. Gradually the ship
slowed in its headlong pace. Nearly the size of a small planet, was
this ship; entire generations had been born and died aboard it, during
the trip between Galaxies. Somewhere deep inside, perpetual generators
pounded out the power that had driven them through space faster than
light.

N'Zik and Shi-Zik had never seen those generators, nor were they
conscious now of the smooth threnody. They had known it always. Miles
of inter-locking corridors extended behind them too, a veritable city
with vast rooms of wonderful machinery--but none of this had they ever
seen. For DEATH had struck suddenly there, was lurking there still.

The huge metal tomes told of it. N'Zik and Shi-Zik had read that
history so often that they knew it now by heart. They knew how and why
the last generations had been wiped out.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first scientists had planned well for the safety and well-being
of the generations to come, but they had overlooked one thing. Within
their own Galaxy they had been cognizant of certain cosmic rays, which
were harmless insofar as they had no apparent effect on living tissues.
However, in that utter vacuity between Galaxies _no such rays existed_!
And there between Galaxies new generations were born. Five, ten, a
dozen generations. And at last--they had reached the new Galaxy....

Whether the cosmic rays here differed, or whether the new generations
had simply lost all resistance to them, was never fully known. The
race had died by thousands as the hard rays penetrated the ship. The
scientists worked feverishly to build up a section with layers of
their heaviest metals; but by the time they had achieved a sufficient
thickness, a few dozen had survived.

N'Zik and Shi-Zik were the last of that final group.

Now, under N'Zik's sure guidance, the ship crossed the orbits of the
outer planets. He had thrown over the deceleration control, but their
speed was still tremendous.

In a few minutes craggy fragments of rock were skimming past their
hull. The larger ones were deflected by automatic repulsion plates and
the few that drifted through became molten upon contact. Such was their
speed.

Then they were through the swarm, and N'Zik remarked, "This is an old
system indeed. At one time a planet must have occupied that orbit."

"Look." Shi-Zik's spider-like body was taut with eagerness as she
pointed to a planet far ahead, swinging away from their trajectory.
"Shall we follow it?"

"There is no purpose. We can pick it up in the etheroscope." N'Zik
adjusted the sights. The planet together with its two moons leaped into
view on the screen. N'Zik manipulated the magnilens and it was brought
still nearer.

Vast icy caps encompassed most of this world. The rest was frozen
desert, slightly reddish, with a few peculiar straight-line markings
that might have been man-made. But that didn't interest them now.
It was all too apparent that this planet had been uninhabitable for
millennia.

"Dead. A frozen, dead world," Shi-Zik intoned. "Let us go on to the
next one."

They moved ever inward. The next planet with its single satellite
offered no more promise. Here they saw stark mountain ranges in
contrast to vast hollows that might have been dead ocean bottoms. The
magnilens picked out several cities, tottering, crumbling in ruin.

"Cities," N'Zik muttered. "Cities still standing on this airless world.
A civilization once existed here, and it cannot have been so long ago.
Shall we go on, Shi-Zik? There are two or three other planets but I
fear they will offer no more than this."

Now something of N'Zik's despair came upon Shi-Zik. "No, we need not
go on. I feel weary of it all. I care not if we ever find the place we
seek."

"I too, have had this feeling," N'Zik waved his limbs in agreement.
"Shi-Zik, we have searched this Galaxy through. There may yet be
life-giving Suns with planets, but we have not much time. Of late I
have felt the engines becoming sluggish of power...."

"True. The way has been long." She gestured hopelessly. "Do you suggest
then, that we put an end to the mission?"

"Not without your consent, Shi-Zik."

"I have wanted to end it!" Shi-Zik cried. "For a very long time I have
thought of it, but dared not speak."

"And yet," N'Zik mused, "perhaps we should search further. Search until
the end. It was the will of our forebears that the race be continued.
Should we end so ingloriously what they set out to achieve?"

"The will of our forebears is as nothing to the will of Praav," Shi-Zik
spoke softly, gazing out to the stars. "Praav has watched safely over
us all this time. If He had wanted us to find a place, we should have
found it. And we need not end ingloriously. Observe, N'Zik, that we,
the last of our kind, have ended here, at what is probably the last
planetary system. Its sun is dying as our race is dying. Let us all go
out in a final flame together, a blaze of glory!"

The bitterness had left N'Zik now. "You are right, my dear. It was
meant that we should end here. I believe Praav has willed it so!"

He threw the controls over to full acceleration and locked them
into place. The colossus of all spaceships piled acceleration upon
acceleration with the speed of light, plunging on its unerring course
toward the dying Sun. The two beings from another Galaxy stood at the
forward port, proudly side by side. N'Zik looked at Shi-Zik and felt
such a peace as he had never known.

And Shi-Zik murmured, "Praav, in his inscrutable wisdom...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Curt Sanders climbed wearily up the last steep passage from the city
below. Space-suited and helmeted, he emerged from the low line of
cliffs and looked out upon the desolate surface of Mercury.

For the past week he had worked hard in the underground laboratories.
Occasionally he came to the surface where he could see the dark sky,
and the pin-points of stars, and the dying Sun once more. That alone
gave him incentive to go on. He, with the several thousand others,
were working out the problem which might save them from extinction. It
was slow work, damnably slow and hard, and Curt knew in his heart they
would not be in time.

He raised his face to the red orb whose heat scarcely touched
here. Again he marvelled that disaster had come so suddenly. Solar
radiation was not supposed to end like that! It should have gone on
for millennia. That's what the scientists had preached. But it had
ended--scarcely five hundred years ago. Curt had never known Earth,
only the city here far within Mercury, where there was meager warmth
and light. And now even the internal heat of Mercury was fast cooling.

Curt turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. That would be Olana.
She, too, came here each week.

She stopped beside him, raised her helmeted face to Sun and stars
with infinite longing. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Olana
clicked on her helmet radio.

"Each time, Curt ... each time I come here I imagine the Sun has grown
dimmer. Is it really only my imagination?"

"Yes. It becomes dimmer, but not perceptibly. Solar radiation is
electronic, and the theory is that our Sun has merely exhausted an
outer sheath of electrons. Lord knows what internal condition caused
it! If it's a solid body, it may be due to certain peculiarities of
the strata. The sun spots of hundreds of years ago must have been the
beginning of the end."

She nodded. "How is the work coming?"

"The Traction Rays? Slowly, Olana--too slowly." Curt shook his head
in weariness. "We're in the process of testing, but they are still
not strong enough. It means months more of work, and we shall need
hundreds! You know, if we fail on the first attempt we shall not have
another chance."

"I--I still don't quite understand it," Olana was puzzled. "I know it
has something to do with the orbit of Vulcan. But how can it save us?"

"It may not. It's a forlorn chance. You know of course that Vulcan's a
very small planet, scarcely larger than Earth's moon. And it pursues
an orbit much closer to the Sun than Mercury. If we can drive it out of
its orbit with the Traction Rays, it may fall into the Sun!"

"But suppose," Olana pointed out, "it only takes up a closer orbit?"

"Exactly why we're taking no chances. We must be sure our rays are
strong enough to _propel_ it into the Sun."

"And what then?"

Curt shrugged. "After that it's anybody's guess. Professor Marston
believes that such a collision will set up a combustion sufficient to
release internal electronic action from the Sun's depths. And, once
that is started, the Sun will blaze again."

"I see," Olana exclaimed. "Something like stirring up dying embers!"

"Yes." There was no eagerness in Curt's voice. "No doubt there are
forces within the Sun sufficient to last for millennia, if they could
only be released. But they must be deep within. I'm afraid nothing we
do with Vulcan will be enough."

"Why, you're just a pessimist!"

Curt smiled wanly. "No, just realistic. And very tired! It's been a
trying week. Come, we'd better be getting back."

"Wait." Olana stopped him. She was gazing at the blackness beyond the
horizon's rim. "Curt, look."

"Meteor?" He followed her gaze. "No! I never saw a meteor like _that_!"

They saw a patch of light against the reddish sunglow. It wasn't
extended light, it seemed to move as a bulk and with such speed as no
meteor had ever attained. For half a minute they watched it become
smaller--then it disappeared. Curt shook his head in puzzlement.

[Illustration: _They saw a patch of light against the reddish sunglow._]

"That beats me! For a minute I had a feeling--yes, I was _right_! It
went straight into the Sun! Olana--!"

But she had seen, too. She was scarcely aware of Curt's fierce grip on
her arm.

       *       *       *       *       *

Directly in the center of the maroon Sun a tiny pinpoint of white had
appeared. Even as they watched, it seemed to mushroom slowly outward.

"That was no meteor!" Curt exclaimed. "Whatever caused that explosion
was travelling at the speed of light, and must have had tremendous
bulk! Why ... I doubt if even Vulcan striking with its orbital velocity
could cause such a display!"

For an hour they watched. At the end of that time the whitish glow had
given no sign of receding; if anything, it had become ever so slightly
larger. They stared, entranced with a new hope.

At last Olana placed a hand on Curt's arm and murmured, "God, in his
inscrutable wisdom...."