Islands of Space

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As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in the void between
galaxies, Arcot, Wade, Morey and Fuller could see below them, like a
vast shining horizon, the mass of stars that formed their own island
universe. Morey worked a moment with his slide rule, then said, "We made
good time! Twenty-nine light years in ten seconds! Yet you had it on at
only half power...."

Arcot pushed the control lever all the way to full power. The ship
filled with the strain of flowing energy, and sparks snapped in the air
of the control room as they raced at an inconceivable speed through the
darkness of intergalactic space.

But suddenly, far off to their left and far to their right, they saw two
shining ships paralleling their course! They held grimly to the course
of the Earth ship, bracketing it like an official guard.

The Earth scientists stared at them in wonder. "Lord," muttered Morey,
"where can they have come from?"

       *       *       *       *       *

John W. Campbell first started writing in 1930 when his first short
story, _When the Atoms Failed_, was accepted by a science-fiction
magazine. At that time he was twenty years old and still a student at
college. As the title of the story indicates, he was even at that time
occupied with the significance of atomic energy and nuclear physics.

For the next seven years, Campbell, bolstered by a scientific background
that ran from childhood experiments, to study at Duke University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and sold science-fiction,
achieving for himself an enviable reputation in the field.

In 1937 he became the editor of _Astounding Stories_ magazine and
applied himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine and the
field of s-f writing in general. His influence on science-fiction since
then has been great. Today he still remains as the editor of that
magazine's evolved and redesigned successor, _Analog_.




ISLANDS

OF

SPACE

by

JOHN W. CAMPBELL


ACE BOOKS, INC.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036




ISLANDS OF SPACE

Copyright, 1956, by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Copyright, 1930, by Experimenter Publications, Inc.

An Ace Book, by arrangement with the author.

All Rights Reserved

_Cover by McKeon_

_Also by John W. Campbell In Ace editions_:

THE BLACK STAR PASSES (F-346)
THE MIGHTIEST MACHINE (F-364)

Printed in U.S.A.

[Illustration]




PROLOGUE


In the early part of the Twenty Second Century, Dr. Richard Arcot,
hailed as "the greatest living physicist", and Robert Morey, his
brilliant mathematical assistant, discovered the so-called "molecular
motion drive", which utilized the random energy of heat to produce
useful motion.

John Fuller, designing engineer, helped the two men to build a ship
which used the drive in order to have a weapon to seek out and capture
the mysterious Air Pirate whose robberies were ruining Transcontinental
Airways.

The Pirate, Wade, was a brilliant but neurotic chemist who had
discovered, among other things, the secret of invisibility. Cured of his
instability by modern psychomedical techniques, he was hired by Arcot to
help build an interplanetary vessel to go to Venus.

The Venusians proved to be a humanoid race of people who used telepathy
for communication. Although they were similar to Earthmen, their blue
blood and double thumbs made them enough different to have caused
distrust and racial friction, had not both planets been drawn together
in a common bond of defense by the passing of the Black Star.

The Black Star, Nigra, was a dead, burned-out sun surrounded by a
planetary system very much like our own. But these people had been
forced to use their science to produce enough heat and light to stay
alive in the cold, black depths of interstellar space. There was nothing
evil or menacing in their attack on the Solar System; they simply wanted
a star that gave off light and heat. So they attacked, not realizing
that they were attacking beings equal in intelligence to themselves.

They were at another disadvantage, too. The Nigrans had spent long
millennia fighting their environment and had had no time to fight among
themselves, so they knew nothing of how to wage a war. The Earthmen and
Venusians knew only too well, since they had a long history of war on
each planet.

Inevitably, the Nigrans were driven back to the Black Star.[A]

The war was over. And things became dull. And the taste of adventure
still remained on the tongues of Arcot, Wade, and Morey.

[Footnote A: See "_The Black Star Passes_", Ace Books, F-346.]




I


Three men sat around a table which was littered with graphs, sketches of
mathematical functions, and books of tensor formulae. Beside the table
stood a Munson-Bradley integraph calculator which one of the men was
using to check some of the equations he had already derived.