THUNDER IN THE VOID A NOVEL By Henry Kuttner “I keep my promises, my friend. I’m taking this boat to Pluto, and I’ll kill a lot of them before they finally get me. But—even though you have won, you have lost as well. Because you’re going with me too!” [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astonishing Stories, October 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] FOREWORD Late in the Twentieth Century Man, for the first time, burst through the invisible barrier that had always kept him chained to his planet. A new and almost uncharted ocean lay before him, its vastness illimitable, its mysteries as yet unexplored. Magellan, Columbus, Leif Ericsson—these primitives expected great wonders as the searoads opened before the prows of their ships. But the first spacemen thought—mistakenly, as it proved—that the airless void between the worlds could hold little unknown to them. They did not foresee that actual experience of a thing is far different from abstract knowledge of it. They did not foresee the death that leaped upon them from the outer dark, the strange, enigmatic horror that killed men without leaving trace or clue. The ships came back, crews decimated. Out there lay a menace that slew with blind, ravening fury. For a time space held its secret. And then the Varra spoke to us, warned us, told us why space was forbidden. The Varra—glowing balls of light that hung in the void, vortices of electro-magnetic energy, alive and intelligent. For generations, they said, they had tried to communicate with us. But they could not exist except in airless space, or under specialized conditions. They were not protoplasmic in nature; they were beings of pure energy. But they were intelligent and friendly. From them we learned the nature of the menace. A race of beings dwelt on Pluto, so different from both humanity and the Varra that they were almost inconceivable. This race had never mastered space travel; it had no need to leave its dark world. Only the immense power of the Plutonians’ minds reached out through the void, vampiric, draining the life-energy from living organisms over incredible distances. Like medieval robber-barons they laired on their planet, and the tentacles of their minds reached impalpably out for prey. Vampires of energy. Vampires of life. But the Varra they could not touch or harm. The peculiar physical structure of the Varra rendered them safe from the Plutonian creatures. A World Fleet was sent out to subdue Pluto, against the advice of the Varra. It did not return.