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 “molecula...

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 many books and papers they had collected were hastily put into the briefcases, and the four men took the elevator to the landing area on the roof. “We’ll take my car,” Morey said. “The rest of you...

It was two weeks before Dr. Robert Arcot and his old friend Arthur Morey, president of Transcontinental Airways, were invited to see what their sons had been working on. The demonstration was to take ...

The Ancient Mariner was built in the big Transcontinental shops in Newark; the power they needed was not available in the smaller shops. Working twenty-four hours a day, in three shifts, skilled men t...

Arcot, at the controls of the Ancient Mariner, increased the acceleration as the ship speared up toward interplanetary space. Soon, the deep blue of the sky had given way to an intense violet, and thi...

“What’s the matter?” asked Fuller anxiously. Arcot pointed out the window at a red star that blazed in the distance. “We got too near the field of gravity of that young giant and he threw us for a los...

Silently, the four men watched the two ships, waiting for any hostile movement. There was a long, tense moment, then something happened for which three of them were totally unprepared. Arcot burst int...

Forty hours later, Arcot was running the ship smoothly at top speed once again. The four men had gone to bed after more than thirty hours of hard work. That, coupled with the exhaustion of working und...

Below the ship lay the unfamiliar panorama of an unknown world that circled, frozen, around a dim, unknown sun, far out in space. Cold and bleak, the low, rolling hills below were black, bare rock, co...

Arcot looked speculatively at the star field in the great broad window before him. “We’ll want to find another G-0 sun, naturally, but I don’t think we ought to go directly from here. If we did, we’d ...

Morey thought he was the first to waken when, seven hours later, he dressed and dove lightly, noiselessly, out into the library. Suddenly, he noticed that the telectroscope was in operation⁠—he heard ...

Hours later, Arcot regained consciousness. It was quiet in the ship. He was still strapped in his seat in the control room. The relux screens were in place, and all was perfectly peaceful. He didn’t k...

The Ancient Mariner hung high in the air, poised twenty-five miles above the surface of the little lake. Wade, as chemist, tested the air while the others readied the distillation and air condensation...

The four earthmen watched the fleet of alien ships roar through the air toward them. “Now how shall we signal them?” asked Morey, also trying to be nonchalant, and failing as badly as Arcot had. “Don’...

There was the familiar tension in the air as the space field built up and they were hurled suddenly forward; the starlike dot of the planet suddenly expanded as they rushed forward at a speed far grea...

Below the Ancient Mariner, the great buildings of the alien city jutted up in the gray light of this gray world; their massiveness seemed only to accentuate the depressing light. On the broad roofs, t...

“Morey, pull down the wall over that door to block their passage,” Arcot ordered. “I’ll get the other wall.” Arcot pointed his pistol and triggered it. The outer wall flew outward in an explosion of f...

Hundreds of years ago, on Nansal, there had lived a wise and brilliant teacher named Norus. He had developed an ideal, a philosophy of life, a code of ethics. He had taught the principles of nobility ...

Torlos spread his hands eloquently. “That is the history of our war. Can you wonder that my people were suspicious when your ship appeared? Can you wonder that they drove you away? They were afraid of...

For two days, the Ancient Mariner lay hidden in the hills. It was visible all that time, but at least two of the men were watching the sky every hour of the day. Torlos himself was, they knew, perfect...

The party descended to the ground floor and walked out to the ship. They filed into the airlock, and in the power room they looked in amazement at the tiny machines that ran the ship. The long black c...

The Nansalian fleet was already outside the city and hard at it. The fight was on! But Arcot saw that the fight was one-sided in the extreme. Ship after ship of the Nansalian fleet seemed to burst int...

Richard Arcot stepped into the open airlock of the Ancient Mariner and walked down the corridor to the library. There, he found Fuller and Wade battling silently over a game of chess and Morey relaxed...

See The Black Star Passes, Ace Books, F-346. ↩...