“Oh,” said Jocelyn. “You mean you’ve got a time machine. How nice. Well thanks a lot for letting me see you fellows, and don’t worry about my keeping your secret. I won’t tell. And I want . . .”
“What’s the matter?” asked Gaynor blankly.
Jocelyn stared at him. “You’re trying to trick me, that’s all. And you’re not going to get away with it. Time machines are impossible. And if you think you’ve got one—I’m going home.”
“But stop, Jocelyn,” cried Gaynor. “We know time machines are impossible. We didn’t say it was a time machine—you did. As a matter of fact, it probably isn’t a time machine.”
“As a matter of fact,” Clair chimed in sourly, “we don’t know what it is.”
Jocelyn looked up at that. “Sure you’re not joking?” They both nodded vehemently. She hesitated, then, “You know,” she said, “I think I’m going to like this.”
AN HOUR later, Gaynor was finishing the job of explaining things to Jocelyn while Clair finished hooking up connections in the lab in the next room.
“This tube,” Gaynor was saying, “is the keystone of our work. The thing inside that looks like a buckshot is composed of what will be Element 99 when the power is turned on. There’s a lot of gadgets in here that you wouldn’t understand if I explained them to you, but take it from me that I did a fine job in designing this tube. Consider: 99 is artificial, and it’s pretty unstable. I had to incorporate the equipment for building it up and sustaining it. 99 is also radioactive, and I had to shield it to keep you, me, and the machine from crumbling into little glowing lumps. Those together ought to mean about five hundred pounds of equipment, but that was around four hundred and ninety-five more than I could get away with, because of the lack of storage space in the Prototype. So I condensed it to this.” With which effusion he hefted the article in his hand. It fell to the floor with a crunch, its delicate members battered out of shape and its finely fused tubes shattered into bits.
“I see,” said Jocelyn. “A neat bit of human interest. Was that the last one?”
“No,” said Gaynor somberly. “We have a couple left.” He took another from a locker and as they walked from the storeroom cast a glance back at the mess on the floor. “It looked a little defective anyhow,” he said.
In the lab, Clair assigned the girl a place at a rheostat. “When the buzzer buzzes,” he said, “open it wide and stand back.” The tube was inserted, insulated, and tested, and the three took their various places, Clair gave the signal, and the circuits were closed in perfect order. They stared at the tube. It brightened, glowed, and then—smashed wide open without an apparent reason.
Clair opened the master circuit, looked up. “It did it again,” he said wearily. “Why?”
“Yeah, why?” echoed Gaynor.
“Why what?” asked Jocelyn. “Why did it break, you mean?”
“Yeah,” said Clair dispiritedly.
“Isn’t it supposed to do that? When the proto pulls it?”
Gaynor glared at her. “Sure the proto pulls it, and—Hey! That is what it’s supposed to do!”
Clair sat down heavily. “It sure is,” he agreed. “Of all the damn fools, Paul, you and I . . .”
Gaynor was galvanized. “So all we have to do, Art, all we have to do is make the tube strong enough to take the ship with it when it begins pulling!”
“Did I solve something?” asked Jocelyn, a little bewildered. No one paid any attention to her. All of a sudden, they were hard at work.
CHAPTER THREE
Einstein’s Extreme
PHYSICISTS generally have swarms of helpers and technicians to do all the rough, tough manual labor required in their work. This is for two reasons: because successful physicists are generally in their nineties and unable to lift anything much heavier than a gavel at an alumni meeting, and because it is considered by the majority demeaning for a mind-worker to use his hands.
That is only one of the many ways in which Gaynor and Clair differed from the Genus Physicist. They were young and strong enough to lift anything within reason and they had cranes for the stuff that was unreasonable and yet had to be lifted.
And they couldn’t afford to have anyone but themselves—and Miss Earle—in their lab. If anyone knew then everyone might. An irresponsible writer or reporter would scatter the news broadcast and effectively gum up their immense undertaking.
So Gaynor, Clair, and Jocelyn did every last screw-turn and rivet-spread in the creation of the Prototype.
In about two weeks the job was done. Their ship was ready, a squat but very beautiful object in the eyes of its creators. The installation was complete; it was ready for the test.
Jocelyn took final notes. “Three dozen eggs,” she read from a list.
“Check,” said Clair, passing them to Gaynor who stacked the boxes neatly in the ship’s compact refrigeration unit.
“Six pound of bacon . . .”
“And that,” she said, “is the last of the food. Now, perhaps, you’ll tell me why you wanted enough provisions for a month?”
Evasively, Clair answered, “You never can tell. We may like it so much out there that we’ll decide to stay awhile.”
Gaynor descended from the Prototype’s main port. “Yeah,” he said. “The lady’s right. I am a physicist, Art, a physicist. Not a porter. And I do not enjoy carrying sacks of sugar and cans of corn. I don’t know why I should be carrying this junk, anyway. We’re not going to be gone long—presumably. If the gadgets work, two days. If not—not.”
Clair chewed his thumbnail. “You never can tell,” he said. “Maybe I can have a hunch myself, once in a while.” He stood up and said abruptly, “Get your pencils and paper, Jocelyn. I guess we’re leaving—now.”
Silently, the girl gathered her notebooks up from a table and stepped into the ship. Clair swung home a last switch in the lab and passed through the bulkhead. He slammed and sealed the door. Flatly, he said, “We don’t know what to expect in the line of atmosphere out there.”
Gaynor took his position at the power receiver. Clair stood at the control. “I’m ready when you are, Paul,” he said.
His colleague flipped a switch, a relay clicked, and the indicator arced over to the right. “Power on, Art,” he said softly. And Clair closed the prime contact. Slowly the tube warmed up, glimmering with a purplish light. That was the bottle of glass and the maze of wires that was to pull them from one dimension and hurl them into another.
He slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, pulled over a rheostat, and the tube slowly brightened.
And nothing else happened. That was all. The tube got brighter.
Desperately, angrily, Clair shoved the rheostat all the way over. And nothing, nothing at all, still seemed to have happened.
Gaynor cried sharply, “What’s the matter?”
Clair said nothing. There was nothing to say. A half a year of work seemed to be wasted. And the finest chance of exploring ever given mortal men seemed to have been snatched away as a mirage. Suddenly Jocelyn screamed. “Look,” she cried. “The window!” The two men turned and gasped at the sight before them.
“That isn’t the lab,” whispered Gaynor. “Not in a million years. We’re outside, Art. We’ve done it!”
CLAIR stared through the quartz plate. The scene that met his eyes was incredible—un-Earthly. It was new, he thought. A blankness that had yet to be moulded into a thing more definite. Without shape, dimension or duration, it was—Outside.
“But what place is this, Paul? It’s not space, not even space in another universe. It’s no planet that could ever exist. It’s not like anything that’s logical at all.”
“You’re right. God knows. I don’t think that I could give a name to this place. I don’t think that any man could. Could you even hope to describe it to anyone, Jocelyn?”
“Not if I knew more words than Shakespeare. Paul—if this is nowhere near the lab or even our universe—why is gravitation in the ship normal as far as I can see?”
&nbs
p; Gaynor smiled. “Awfully simple, woman,” he said. “Obviously we have artifical gravity. We invented it almost a month ago. And—by the way—this is a spaceship too. We installed a gravity-drive. “Now then, Art, get away from that window and rig up the cameras. Jocelyn, take notes. I’m going to fiddle with a spectroscope.”
The girl balanced a pad on her knee, dashing onto paper the random notes and observations of the two men. Minutes later, Clair was trying to develop a photographic plate and let loose some particularly blistering adjectives. “Shall I take that down?” she asked, raising her delicate eyebrows.
“Better not,” he said. “But this—this—this lousy pan won’t come out like it should. It doesn’t look like much out there, I know, but this crazy plate won’t show it anyway. Come here, Pavlik!” he called. Gaynor came from the other end of the ship.
“So Dr. Clair shouts aloud in the middle of a triple spectroanalysis,” he said nastily. “So Dr. Gaynor comes running to find out what disaster has endangered our valuable lives. So the spectroanalysis is ruined from beginning to end. What’s eating my esteemed colleague?”
Clair held up the plate. “I’m sorry, Pavel,” he said, “but this thing won’t develop. I thought that since you are the expert of this expedition and I your fumbling but well-intentioned subordinate you might diagnose this little dab’s trouble.”
Gaynor took the plate. “Your labored sarcasm—” he began. Then his voice trailed off. Tensely he asked, “Is this the first that you’ve developed or tried to?”
“Yes,” said Clair. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Plenty. Did you ever hear of Kodak mining? Probably not. It was like this. In the primitive days of excavation—say 1920—radium mines were driven hit or miss, win or lose. Then some bright chap discovered that if you leave a roll of film in certain spots the film will be ruined and thus mark the spot of a radium deposit. Art, this film is ruined, having been in the presence of richly radioactive matter. Need I say more?”
Clair smote himself on the forehead; “Radioactivity—here!” he cried. “I see it all and apologize for having been a blind imbecile in the face of the facts. Let’s not talk about it just yet. Let’s have dinner first. Being stuck in the middle of somewhere else puts an edge on your appetite.”
“Any excuse for a meal,” said Jocelyn, dumping a can of beans into a heating unit. “Just like a man. And when will I be told these dazzlingly obvious facts that you two seized on and curse yourselves for being so long about it?”
“After dinner, woman, you will hear all,” said Gaynor firmly. They sat down in silence to eat.
THE dishwashing—which consisted of dropping several cans and plates into a sealed container—was accomplished, and the three lit cigarettes. Jocelyn placed herself obtrusively before the two physicists and demanded, “Secret. Now.”
Vaguely, Clair began, “I don’t exactly know. It’s just that we have a feeling we’re out of time entirely. Indications show that we’ve been pulled out of our own universe and not just chucked into another one at random, but that we’ve been slung outside of all the universes that ever were.” He examined the tip of his cigarette intently, crossing his eyes.
“Damn it!” cried the girl. “And damn it twice! We have to be somewhere, don’t we?”
“Obviously, my dear,” said Gaynor soothingly. “And so we are. But as nearly as I can see, we aren’t in any space-time that’s ever been used before. We’ve got a brand new one all to ourselves. It must sound like boasting, I know, but I think we created this hunk of nothing.”
Jocelyn began to laugh. “Well,” she finally gurgled, “we sure made one lousy job of it! Listen, Messrs. Jehovah—why haven’t we got a nice spot to land on? This seems to be an awfully big universe for just the Prototype and us three.”
“Sure; it has to be,” answered Clair seriously. “Einstein announced to a breathless world a long time ago: The more matter, the less space; the more space the less matter.’ We are probably the closest approach that ever has or ever will be made to one of his limiting extremes—a universe of all space and no matter.”
“Excuse me,” said Jocelyn humbly. “The more I hear from you two enraptured scientists the stupider I feel. But would you mind explaining that no doubt pertinent axiom of Mr. Einstein? It seems very silly. I mean, the more space is displaced by matter, the less space there is. Obviously—no. I mean the less space—that is, matter—the less matter in a universe the more room there must be for space!”
The men looked at each other. “ ‘Space displaced by matter.’ ” said Gaynor pityingly.
“ ‘Room for space,’ ” Clair richly announced, rolling the phrase over his tongue.
“I’d feel a lot safer in recommending a good book on the subject, but roughly what Einstein implied was this,” said Clair. “Space isn’t nothing. Or, putting it differently, it is something. Since you don’t know math, I can best describe it as a thin, weary substance partly squamous and partly rugous. Its most striking property is that when it surrounds—or penetrates—or engenders—what is called matter, which is only space, but somewhat thicker and more alert, there is a certain amount of strain.
“So naturally space gives somewhat at the seams. It wrinkles and curves all out of shape—but space, when it is curving keeps right on extending itself, and so it sort of grows crooked. In its extension it keeps on until it meets itself coming back, thereby generating a closed curve.
“Obviously the more matter the bigger a beating space takes and the sharper it curves and the sooner it meets itself. So then the closed curve is smaller and more limiting of itself.”
“Thank you,” said Jocelyn sweetly. “I’m sorry I asked you in the first place.”
“Never mind that cad,” said Gaynor indignantly. “When we get back you can tell your friends that not only did you have a whole universe practically to your self but that yours was at least three billion times bigger than theirs.”
“Speaking of getting back,” Clair interrupted. “What shall we do now? There isn’t anything to see here—want to get home? Or shall we wait here and dope out some way of getting somewhere else where there is something to see?”
“We can’t do that, Art. At least I don’t want to try. If we start breaking into brand-new frames we may get so lost that we won’t even remember we have a home. We’d better just scat. As it is I’m licking my lips over what we’re going to tell the honorable academy of science. Hell, we’ve seen enough here to leave us limp—even though all we’ve seen is nothing.”
Clair nodded, but a bit wistfully. There were lots of things that could be done here—lots of places to be visited from this jumping-off point.
“We’re on our way, then,” he said. “Position, Paul. Let’s tap the broadcast.” Jocelyn looked a question, so he explained. “We’re using our own system of beam-power. Naturally, we couldn’t carry enough.”
Gaynor turned the switch on the audio receiver. A second passed as the tubes warmed up; then a faint hum.
“God, Art, but that’s dim,” he said worriedly.
Clair was equally perturbed. “Yeah—try to tap it now. There’s no use stalling. Even if we don’t get enough power to just slap us back we might accumulate enough to limp home.”
Gaynor shrugged his shoulders and closed another switch. The dial quivered and swung over. Then seconds crawled by, and then the automatic relays in the lab seemed to have reacted, because the power intake needle quivered faintly. It came to rest at a point infinitesimally removed from zero. “Faint is right,” said Gaynor.
Clair touched the prime switch. Nothing happened. The tube didn’t even glow.
He shoved the rheostat over viciously. At the very peak-end of its arc, when the power flowing through the tube under normal conditions would have been inconceivable, the tractor tube very faintly reddened.
And that was all. With common accord the three voyagers looked out of the window. The scene had not changed an iota. Blackness swirled indescribably before
them, on the other side of a meager inch of metal, quartz, and plastic.
CHAPTER FOUR
Baby Universe
A FULL minute passed as they stared out of the port. Jocelyn interrupted the dismal silence with, “It looks as if we’ll have to plan on being here for a hell of a long time, gentlemen. Apparently, I’ll never write those feature stories.”
“Yeah,” said Clair vaguely. “A hell of a long time.” He cut off the trickle of power, and the indicator needle ticked back to zero. “Maybe we’d better get some sleep,” he said. “We might dream of a solution.”
Silently Gaynor swung down the three bunks and drew curtains between them, and they vanished into their improvised compartments.
Clair was nearly asleep when Gaynor hissed at him through the thin barrier. “What do you want now?” he asked drearily.
“It occurs to me,” said Gaynor, “that we’ve made a mistake.”
“That’s about as obvious an understatement as ever I’ve heard in a long and aimless career. What do you mean?”
“Listen: the logical train is as follows. We haven’t figured a way out because we have no power. And if we have no power we have no proto. And if we have no proto we have no pull. And now, colleague, tell me just what good it would do us if we had any power?”
“Pavlik, I’m too tired for riddles. What have you found?”
“Just this—proto attracts 99. It doesn’t repel it. It can’t attract us any closer because we’re where the proto comes from in the first place. So even if we build up the 99—what happens then? There wouldn’t be any effect!”
“Then that means,” said Clair, suddenly tense, “we’ve reached a perfect impasse. You’re right, of course. But it doesn’t do us any good. Less than no good at all, in fact, because now we know that we wouldn’t know how to get away if we had the power in the first place.”
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