It could have defended itself if discovered. There was no reason for it to take to intergalactic space. That it did so seems to rule out accident. But it is equally inconceivable that any possible device could intentionally have found the Haslip Expedition in that unthinkable gulf between galaxies.
But it happened. Two years journeying out from the First Galaxy, when the younger children had already forgotten what it was like to see a sun and had lost all memories of ever being out-of-doors beneath a planetвs sky, the expeditionвs fuel store began to deteriorate.
Perhaps a single molecule of the vast quantity of fuel was altered by a cosmic ray. It is known that the almost infinitely complex molecules of overdrive fuel are capable of alteration by neutron bombardment, so the cosmic-ray alteration is possible. In any case, the fuel began to change. As if a contagious allotropic modification were spreading, the fuel progressively became useless*.
* Pure metallic tin, at low temperatures, sometimes changes sspontaneously to a gray, amorphous powder, the change beginning at one spot and spreading to the rest of the material. M.L.
Two years out from the First Galaxy, the expedition found itself already underfueled. By heroic efforts, the contaminated fuel was expelled from the tanks. But there was not enough sound fuel left to continue to the Second Galaxy, or to return to the First. If all drive were cut off and the expeditionвs ship simply drifted on, it might reach the Second Galaxy in three centuries with fuel left for exploration and landings.
Neither the original crew nor their children nor their grandchildren could hope to reach such a journeyвs end. But their many-times-great-grandchildren might. So the Haslip Expedition conserved what fuel was left and the; ship drifted on in utter emptiness, and the adults of the crew settled down to endure the imprisonment which would last for generations.
They did not need to worry about food or air. The ship was self-sustaining on that score. They even had artificial gravity. But the ship must drift for three centuries before the drive was turned on again.
Actually, it did drift for twenty-three years after the catastrophe. A few of the older members of the crew died; the greater part had no memory at all of anything but the ship.
Then Alyx came. Its approach was heralded by a clamorous ringing of all the alarm bells on the ship. It winked into being out of overdrive a bare half million miles away. It glowed blindingly with the lights it had created to nourish its surface. It swam closer and the crew of the expeditionвs ship set to work fumblinglyч because it had been many years since the drive had been usedчand tried vainly to estimate the meaning of the phenomenon.
Then they felt acceleration toward Alyx. It was not a gravitational pull, but a drawing of the ship itself.
The ship landed on Alyx, and there was the sensation of reeling, of the collapse of all the cosmos. Then the unchanging galaxies began to stir, very slowlyчnot at all like the crawling glow-worms that suns seem within a galaxyчand the older members of the crdw knew that. this entire planet had gone into overdrive.
When they emerged from the ship there were forests, lakes, palacesчsuch beauty as the younger members of the crew had no memory of. Music filled the air and sweet scents, andчin short, Alyx provided the crew of the Haslip Expedition with a very admirable paradise for human beings. And it went on toward the Second Galaxy. .
Instead of the three hundred years they had anticipated, or even the four years that would have remained with the very special overdrive with which the expeditionвs ship was equipped, Alyx came out of overdrive in three months, at the edge of the Second Galaxy.
In the interval, its conimunicators had been at work. It explained, naively, everything that had happened to it among men. It explained its needs. It found wordsч invented words-for explanation of the discoveries the Space Patrol had wanted but could not wait to secure.
Jon Haslip the twenty-second found that he possessed such revelatious of science as unaided human beings would not attain to for thousands of years yet to come. He knew that Alyx could never return to the First Galaxy because it was stronger and wiser than men. But he understood Alyx. It seemed to be an inheritance in his family.
Alyx still could not live without men nor could it live among men. It had brought the Haslip Expedition to the Second Galaxy, and of its own accord it made a new ship modeled upon the one it had drawn to itself, but remarkably better. It offered that ship for exploration of the Second Galaxy. It offered others. It desired only to serve men.
This new ship, made by Alyx, for the Haslip Expedition, returned to Dassos a year later with its reports. In the ship of Alyxвs making, the journey between galaxies took only five monthsчless than the time needed for the ancient first space journey from Earth to Venus.*
* Earth, of course, is familiar as the first home of humanity. It is the third planet of Sol. Venus is the second planet of Sol, and the first journey from a planet to another was that from Earth to Venus. --M.L.
Only a part of the augmented crew of the first ship came back to Dassos with reports for the Space Patrol. Another part stayed behind in the Second Galaxy, working from a base equipped with machines that Alyx had made for the service of men. The Space Patrol was very much annoyed with Jon Haslip the twenty-second. He had not destroyed Alyx. It had informed him truthfully of the fact that it was a danger to men, and he had not destroyed it. Instead, he had made a bargain with it. Those of the younger folk who preferred to remain on Alyx did so. They had palaces and gardens and every imaginable luxury. They also had sciences that overreached those of other men, and Alyx itself for an instructor.
Alyx carried those young folks on toward infinity. In time to come, undoubtedly, some of the descendants of those now living on Alyx would wish to leave it.
They would form a human colony somewhere else. Perhaps some of them would one day rejoin the parent race, bringing back new miracles that they or possibly Alyx had created in its rejoicing at the companionship of the human beings who lived upon it.
This was the report of Jon Haslip the twenty-second. He also had reports of new planets fit for human habitation, of star-systems as vast as those of the First Galaxy, and an unlimited vista of expansion for humanity. But the Space Patrol was very much annoyed. He had not destroyed Alyx.
The annoyance of authority was so great, indeed, that in its report of reassurance to humanityчsaying that there was no more need to fear Alyxчthe name of Jon Haslip was not even mentioned. In the history books, as a matter of fact, the very name of the Haslip Expedition has been changed, and it is now called the First Intergalactic Expedition and you have to hunt through the appendices in the back of the books to find a list of the crew and Jon Haslipвs name.
But Alyx goes on forever. And it is happy. It likes human beings, and some of them live on it.
