A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

“If you are willing, yes.” Ted looked at me critically. “During the first tests I will have the field current so weak that there is no danger of anything happening to us, and as we repeat the tests we will gradually increase the strength of the field in the cap coils.”

  “But when we are under the influence of this device, will we be able to regulate it as we wish?”

  “No. I expect that when we reach another plane of reasoning, this machine and all matter now visible to our eyes, will be beyond our reasoning powers. This world will be invisible to our eyes and its sounds unheard by our ears.”

  “Then how are we going to control this outfit, which will be in a different world from us? Do we have to stay in dreamland until your battery runs down?”

  “I have three automatic circuit devices on if. In case one fails we have others to rely on. One is a clock timing system which is now set to trip the circuit one minute after it is switched on. The second is a slow acting solenoid which can be timed to operate at different speeds by means of the three rotary switches on the small panel, and the third is a small motor rotating disc which breaks the circuit after any length of time desired. I have tested them all out carefully, and there is no fear of all of them failing.”

  “Well, then we’ll make the first test together,” I suggested, “being as you are going to start out with a very weak current. I am about as anxious to see what happens as you are.”

  “All right then, we’ll try a one minute test. The three circuit-breakers are already set for that time, and the set when switched on will gradually increase both the density and frequency of the magnetic field until they become equal to the setting of the dials. Also when the breaker trips the circuit, the same gradual change enables our system to return to their former state without any sudden changes. Now if you will slip your head set on, I’ll lock the door to make sure that no one comes in during the tests, and then we’ll see what’s going to happen. But fasten your chin strap securely, for if your head set should come off while your brain was under the control of the set, the sudden release due to your mask falling off might be fatal to you.”

  CHAPTER II

  The First Adventure

  IN a few moments we had seated ourselves with the skull caps securely fastened on by the chin straps, and had the cords plugged into the panel.

  “All ready?” Ted asked looking over at me.

  “O.K.,” I replied, “here’s for good luck.” Reaching one of the tumbler switches on the large panel, Ted switched it on, and the three centre tubes lit up immediately, while the other two became faintly illuminated. As I watched them I felt a dizziness coming over me. The objects in the room were beginning to look blurred, and I noticed that the two outer radio tubes were burning brighter. I shut my eyes for a moment to ward off the dizzy spell but it was of no use. My head was reeling, and I gripped the arms of the chair to steady myself. When I opened my eyes again, the scene before me was bathed in a whiteness which seemed to fill the very air. Whiter and denser the color became, hiding the room and all its objects from view, until nothing but empty whiteness filled the space about me. My head however was now quite clear, and I was in command of my senses again. I looked over at Ted, but saw nothing only the milky whiteness. My chair and my own body were lost in the enveloping mass. The thick blanket did not hide our world from sight for long however, for in a few moments the objects in the room began breaking through the curtain of white which was losing its density as fast as it had increased. Again that dizziness swept over my brain, but in another moment I found myself sitting in my chair by the radio cabinets and Ted looked over at me with a tickled smile as he unbuckled his chin strap.

  “Tom,” he exclaimed excitedly, as soon as he had removed his head set, “we’ve struck it, just as I thought. The high frequency waves elevated our senses to a higher plane.”

  “You must have seen more than I did then,” I answered, “for I saw no sign of your world. The device simply made me dizzy and blurred my vision.”

  “Sure that’s all it did to me, but that’s enough. It is enough to show that our senses were thrown out of normal by the high frequency field. I didn’t mean that we would see an actual planet, when I talked of another world, although it is possible. I meant that we would be elevated above the plane of our own world into the unknown planes above it. What we will see as we pass into or through the different planes, I don’t know, but our next test should enlighten us. I will increase the frequency about twenty per cent and also increase the density of the field slightly. The most important result of the last test is that we came out of it unaffected by our experience.”

  In five minutes we were again under the power of Ted’s multi-world device, and again I passed through the same dizzy period followed by the engulfing whiteness. But this time the white continued to increase in brightness until it became a dazzling silver which in spite of its brightness for some unknown reason did not blind the eyes in the least. This gorgeous hue had just about reached the most brilliant point possible when a tinge of gold became noticeable, and gradually increased until all space around me was a formless golden mass. Deeper and deeper in color the blanket grew until orange was the dominating hue, and hardly had the rich orange drowned out the brighter shades than I noticed a disturbance in the glowing mass.

  A vibrant movement of some sort was disturbing the colorful substance that filled all space. Gradually it increased and dark circular bands began to take form. But, as the change continued, I saw that the black bands were forming the mass into orange balls; hundreds of them that seemed to fill up the entire surrounding space. Disk on disk of glowing orange color wove in among one another and extended as far as the eye could see. A world of restless glowing balls or disks, some large some small, that seemed to increase in vividness as the black background grew darker. It left before my eyes the marvelous sight of countless bright dots and circles standing out against the pitch black background like the stars of the milky way, and as numerous. As far as the eye could penetrate, the space around was a mass of glowing circles.

  Gradually the closer ones grew larger and the background lost its brightness and faded away. Closer and closer the nearest ones drew up as they thinned out from the maze, and I was soon able to see that there were in reality many bands of alternate dark and bright stars in each orange disk, one within another, with the centre and smallest circle appearing to be a solid disk. On and on they came as the closer ones gained in size drowning all others from view, and crowding one after another from view until only six of the original circular masses could be seen. These now showed their inner rings quite plainly and I saw that they had from six to twenty fiery circles each, enclosing the six rich orange centres.

  Slowly the color darkened, but the changing of position ceased and the scene in general seemed to take on a permanence. The disturbance that I had noticed in the bands had gradually increased however, and the agitating movements of the rings of all the units could now be made out quite well. The next change that I noticed was the brightening of the rings, and with the change the disturbance began to grow fainter. In another moment the group of rings began to draw away as others crowded into view, and soon I was again looking at the maze of countless rings before me, around me, everywhere. Not an object to be seen but the countless bright rings and the jet black background. With the same speed the scenes swept back into one another until once more my eyes beheld the objects of the garage, and once more with a great relief I saw my own body after being thrown into space with nothing but a reasoning mind.

  Deeper and Deeper

  TED was on me talking with great excitement before I even realized that our second test was over.

  “Tom,” he exclaimed excitedly, “what did you see?”

  “A number of bright circles, one within another is all I saw.”

  “Then I’m right, Tom, for I saw the same. Tom we’ve hit upon something that I never expected. Something that will startle the world. We’ve actually seen the atom in action.”<
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  “What?”

  “I mean it Tom. Those blurred circles were electrons speeding around their nucleus. We are going to see those electrons in plain view next time we go under.”

  “You mean that you are going to try and slow down the electrons as they race around their circles?”

  “No, not exactly that, but the result will be the same. I am going to simply speed up our senses, and cut down the ratio of speed between them and the atom. Don’t you see?” he continued excitedly as I made no reply, “what we’ve already done? We’ve increased the frequency at which our senses could work until We could see the orbits of the electrons themselves. The blurred circles were produced by the electrons speeding around their paths at extremely high speed. The electrons are undoubtedly bright objects producing the light all around their orbits due to their speed as seen by us. Our senses were operating at a speed still far below that of the electron, and all we saw was the effects caused by the bright objects as they sped around their centre nucleus.”

  “Then if you think that we are catching up with the atoms’ speed,” I replied, “how do you explain the changing of the scenes that we saw? What caused the atoms with their bright rings to draw up closer to one’s view until only a half dozen were to be seen?”

  “Why the effects of the increasing field current through your head of course. As the power of the waves increase, the sensitiveness of your senses increase, and the range of your eye enables you to see the atoms as being close up instead of being millions of miles away.”

  “Millions of miles away?” I repeated, “why man, you don’t have to look millions of miles to find an atom. All matter of our own earth is supposed to be constructed of atoms.”

  “Exactly, “Ted answered quickly, “but when we were looking at the atoms we were not in our own world. We were in a world altogether different. To us now, an atom is too small an object to grasp in one’s mind. A milllion of them can find parking space on the point of a pin. Our own bodies are made up of countless millions of them, but when we were under the influence of the high frequency waves we were each of us millions of miles away from the closest atom, just as our solar system is millions of miles away from the closest sun. In reality the atoms are spread out like the stars of the universe, each millions of miles from another. The increase of frequency of the waves in our head caps did not draw us closer to the atoms, but made it possible for our senses to respond to speeds that were closer to that of the atom. That is how we witnessed the change of color as we swept up the scale of frequencies.

  “But when the density control regulator of the set constantly increased the strength of the waves, our senses became more powerful or rather more sensitive to the world that they were in. The power of the eye was increased until it could see at close range, a group of the closest atomic systems. One thing that I do not understand clearly is why the micro-universes made their presence known to us in rings instead of as small motionless stars gradually coming closer to us, until the stars and their planets could be made out clearly, just as a man on the earth here would see the distant stars approach us, if such were possible. But it was due, no doubt, to the great contrast between the distance and the speed of the world that we were in.

  “Here on earth we can scarcely see the next closest sun, but its motion as seen by us is practically at a stand still although in reality it is speeding through space at a great speed. Now while we were in the new world, we could see the rings of the closest stars or solar systems, as quick as the central bodies or suns. That is because the speed of our senses was not adjusted properly to the range of the eye which was controlled by the density of the magnetic field. In short the frequency and the density of the waves that passed through our heads, were not adjusted to give us the same results that we experience here in our own world.”

  “You’re getting a bit ahead of me,” I interrupted Ted’s rain of words. “Let me grasp your meaning.”

  CHAPTER III

  A Tragedy

  “IT’S just like this,” he continued, “suppose I that the speed of our universe was speeded up far beyond our present speed, that is in respect to our idea of speed, while our sense of distance remained the same. The planets revolving around their orbits at many times a second would produce bright rings around the paths of their orbits, and an astronomer would see from this earth with the aid of a powerful glass, the universe just as we saw the atomic world, namely, scores of bright rings surrounding luminous disks. But if we were able to draw the distant suns up closer to us by increasing the range of the eye in some way and then were able to make the senses respond to a higher frequency of light waves, we would see the planets slow up in their orbits until the luminous rings disappeared altogether leaving a group of slow moving planets before your eyes.”

  “Then we would see a bunch of molten hot planets,” I cut in.

  “Not necessarily. Take for instance a fly wheel on a machine of some kind. Now place a string of lights around the rim of this wheel and start it revolving at, say, a thousand revolutions a minute. At that speed, instead of the individual lights around the wheel, you would see a continuous streak of light around the rim. Now suppose that you were able to speed up your sense of vision, in other words able to grasp speeds in your mind that at present just cause a blur before your eyes. Then you would be able to cut down the ratio of speed between the revolving fly wheel and the range at which your senses can operate, and you would see the fly wheel revolving much slower than it was. Make your senses respond to a still higher frequency of light waves and you would see the wheel at almost a standstill yet it would still be going at a speed of a thousand revolutions a minute to a man of our own world. You must remember that when we saw the bright rings of the atoms we were in an entirely different plane than the one that we would be in when we would see slow revolving planets. What we saw in one plane is far different from what we would see in another. Id is a different state of affairs altogether.”

  “By jove it’s too deep for me,” I admitted, “by the way you talk, you must believe that every atom is a sort of solar system with the electrons revolving around a sort of sun.”

  “Absolutely. Why shouldn’t I believe it after what I just saw? I don’t see how you can doubt it yourself. It not only looks as if every atom is a sort of solar system of another world or universe, but that the planets and even the suns are inhabited with living inhabitants and reasoning beings.”

  “Aw rot,” I exclaimed in disgust, “you mean to tell me that a pin point contains millions of inhabited planets with countless trillions of inhabitants? A mere point of a pin?”

  “Correct,” he smiled. “There are a million planets with trillions of thinking inhabitants roosting on the point of your pin. Listen-Tom,” he became serious again, “science is still uncertain as to the make-up of the atom, some believe still that it resembles the solar system in its make-up, and you know that the atom is known to be infinitely small, so small that millions of them could park on the point of a pin, as you say. Now, all that I am claiming outside of what is already known or believed concerning the atom, is that you can see it: electrons, nucleus and all. Possibly you see it as you would a solar system with electrons revolving around it like planets of our solar system. However we can’t make any more tests until I add another special tube to the set, for we used almost the maximum output of the set the last time. Anyway we’ve both got to work tomorrow so we’d better get some sleep. I’ll have the extra tube added on by seven tomorrow night, and we’ll take another trip into the atomic world.”

  I noticed that something was starting to worry Ted a little, and thinking that he would want to be left to his own thoughts after such an experience, I bade him good night and promising to be on hand the following night at seven, I left for home. I had little doubt but that Ted would sit there and study over the subject of atoms until he fell asleep. But it would have been useless to try to get him to go to bed. I had tried that before under similar conditions with no success.
I knew Ted and I knew his habits, and was sure that in the morning I would find him sleeping in his chair in the garage. So making up my mind to get up a little early and slip over and wake him before breakfast, I crept into bed.

  My sleep that night was a continuous nightmare of bright rings, atoms, stars and such, topped with a dream of being lost in pitch black space with dark devilish forms and shadows pressing in on me on all sides. Suddenly one of them seized me by the shoulder, and I woke from the dream shaking with fright, to find the light of my room turned on and mother shaking me by the shoulder.

  “Tommy, get up. Something terrible has happened. Ted is dead.”

  “What!” I gasped, suddenly wide awake, “Ted is dead?”

  “He was burned to death in his garage early this morning.”

  Waiting to hear no more, I jumped into my clothes and leaping down the stairs was soon racing down the alley. It was still dark, being no more than four o’clock, and the clear sky above was spotted with millions of stars, that brought back to my mind Ted’s lecture on the atomic universe the previous evening, just a few hours ago.

  Searching for the Secret

  I SMELLED the smouldering ruins of the garage before I came upon the scene, which only tended to speed me up to a faster run. I could not realize that Ted was dead, and couldn’t believe that I had seen my pal for the last time, until I entered the alley behind his house and saw the crowd around the still smouldering ruins. In another moment I had broken through the circle of people and stood looking at the scene before me in a dazed manner. The family car was one mass of ruined and twisted metal while the radio cabinets were broken and charred, with their wiring strung all over the area, burned and discolored beyond recognition. With a shudder I turned from the scene and hurried into the house, and there I found Ted, lying on his own bed still and lifeless. The same Ted with the exception that his face carried the most terrified expression that I ever saw on a human countenance. A police officer standing beside me noticed my gaze riveted on that agonized expression of my dead pal and said: