Absence of Heat

Astounding Science Fiction – June 1944

(1944)*

Randall Garrett

(as Gordon Garrett)

              The boys at the "Flamepalace" on Antares III were telling the usual run of stories at the back table when the black uniform of a Galactic Patrolman walked in. The uniform was filled with the clean-cut figure of Jerry Hammermill, captain of the ship, Velmar, which had just docked at the spaceport on the other side of the planet.

              Unperturbed by the questioning looks from the table the captain seated himself and ordered a round of drinks. After a few minutes tall tales were being spun as though no interruption had come.

              Soon the captain himself unlimbered and asked a question, "Did I ever tell you about the time me and the boys saved the whole Galaxy?   No!   Well, it's like this—

              "We were out on a dead planet called Polaris XIV, way out about eight hundred million miles from Polaris, and Mumsen, the ship's chief scientist, runs into the craziest life-form you ever saw. It seems, according to Mumsen, that these crystalloid organisms will utterly destroy any and all organic material that they come in contact with, and that it propagates rather queerly. Each crystal is filled with internal strains and explodes into small pieces which grow large again. Well, Mumsen figured that the whole planet was loaded with these and that they would explode in exactly seventy-one Galactic hours, and the small crystals would be spread all over the Galaxy.

              "None of the rays on the ship had any effect on them, and an atomic bomb would only serve to make them explode faster. Of course it was impossible to get to the nearest civilized outpost in time to get instruments that would stop it. Hard as it seemed the solution was simple. As you know, the Patrol ships are fitted with a refrigeration unit which will allow them to pass through the center of a sun, even a blue-white, without injury, so we disintegrated a hole to the center of the planet and put the refrigeration unit in it, and started the motor. As soon as we could take off and, in free fall, we fixed our spacewarp mechanism and went back to our base."

              "Now I suppose you're going to tell us that you froze them to death, Wolverine."

              "Yes, and I happen to know that there isn't any such planet as Polaris XIV," contradicted one of the others.

              "Why, I thought you would understand, you are all men of science and should realize what happened. You see, the planet had a temperature of only a few degrees above absolute zero, and, at absolute zero, all matter ceases to exist. All we did was to lower the temperature those few degrees. We just froze the planet out of existence."

The End