by Jerry
“I was afraid that that would be your answer,” Mertin went on, addressing Claire. No emotion showed in his voice. The violent passion which he had conceived for the girl from the day he saw her the first time, a passion as great as that which he displayed in his atomic investigations and which would halt at nothing to achieve its object—none of this feeling which dominated his actions underneath could be guessed at from the coolly satiric tone of his voice.
“Nevertheless, I think you may be induced to change your mind after Mr. MacDonald has, ah, disappeared. I am sure you would favor me with your attention when he ceases to be present. Would Mr. MacDonald himself have been so generous as I in permitting you to be the last person to see him before he commences his, er, larger life?”
“I am not good at guessing riddles,” Bob broke in. “What do you intend to do?”
“I? Oh, I shall do nothing, except throw a small switch. Miss Maxson once informed me that you held the largest portion of her heart. I was impressed; so impressed, I may say, that I have decided to make you physically equal to her opinion of you, and transform you into the largest portion of the universe!”
Claire stared at the scientist as though he was madder than she had thought him to be. Bob himself felt a chill in the menacing voice, and waited for an explanation of the preposterous statement. “And how do you propose to accomplish the feat?” Five minutes must have passed by now. If only he could keep the astrophysicist occupied for ten minutes more!
“By merely throwing the switch to which I referred a moment ago. Allow me to proceed with the explanation which I offered considerably more than a moment ago,” Mertin added reprovingly. “The large cable at your right conducts an electrical charge of ten million volts, a voltage that will be of incalculable value if I decide to apply it to X-ray work. But to resume, the charge, in leaping the gap in the first cathode tube is acted upon by an intensification of the violet fluorescence which you no doubt can make out, and as the cathode is broken, stepped up, transformed, whatever you wish to call it, into four different forms of energy. In the four smaller bulbs, these currents are retransformed and recombined into one new invisible ray which is equally diffused through the silver-black plate and emitted upon whatever object lies in front of it, in this case, you.
“You, thereupon become of the greatest importance for the experiment. You are, of course, familiar with the concepts of matter as atomic structures, and ultimately as pure energy. The invisible rays which fall upon you have several remarkable properties. For one thing, they increase the wave-length and simultaneously increase the frequency per second of the vibrating pure energy which is the ultimate basis of all matter. For another thing, they modify and change the positive-negative electrical structure of the atom itself. The immediate effect is to make each atom an expanding little universe analogous on an infinitely small scale to the great expanding universe in which we live. I have not really released the energy of the atom, you understand, in the sense of breaking it down. I have merely accomplished its expansion or enlarged its spatial properties and relations.
“The result should be most interesting. Your body will expand to, I suppose, limitless dimensions, becoming at the same time more and more tenuous until finally components of the atoms and the atoms themselves will be so widely separated that it will be impossible to detect your existence. I almost wish it were possible for you to return and divulge your sensations and experience, but I fear you will not return. From your standpoint, the world will suddenly dwindle and then the solar system will seem like specks in a microscope and so on, I suppose. I tried the rays on some rodents recently. The rodents, should you care to know, swelled to incredible dimensions with lightning-like rapidity and became successively translucent, transparent, and invisible. I then switched off the rays and sat down to await their return. I am still waiting, for they have not reappeared and I am convinced that they never will come back. Iam unable to say what happened for they passed quite beyond the range of perception by any of the senses or by an instrument with which science is familiar. But you will find out for yourself when you embark on this greatest adventure which will ever befall you.”
Claire made no answer. Her eyes were fastened on Mertin with a kind of unbelieving horror, as some helpless person might regard a dangerous maniac. Bob felt a sinking revulsion inside, but he also felt the curiosity of the scientist in any new discovery—and besides, he was fighting for time as the minutes flew by.
“I don’t believe you!” he flatly challenged Mertin. “If the ray had the nature that you claim for it, it would not only expand the object you placed in front of it, but everything around the object. And the moment the object had expanded outside the sphere of the ray’s influence, it would cease to expand except for that portion of it which was within the sphere of influence. You would only succeed in making a monster out of the rodent, and in crippling to a worse and worse degree whatever part of it remained in line with the rays. You couldn’t obliterate the traces of such a thing, which means that the law would eventually step in and your game would be up. Since that is a risk you wouldn’t dare take, I refuse to be frightened by your charming theory.”
For the flash of an instant the mask dropped and Mertin’s ferocity twisted his features before he regained his composure and murmured with mock admiration: “You prove again that you have the excellent mind which I always credited you with by asking pertinent questions. However, I am afraid that you do not grant me sufficient foresight.
“Nothing around the object expands for the simple reason that the object is placed upon a neutral surface and the plate tilted so that no rays fall upon anything except the object and the neutral surface. Furthermore, once started, the object does continue expanding because the ray has an accelerative nature. Perhaps an analogy will make this clear. Something, some force, at one time set the universe in motion. We do not know of any such force which continues to operate, yet the universe is expanding on a more and more tremendous scale every second that we are here.
“You are unduly skeptical. I am afraid that only the facts will convince you.”
Bob felt a prickle in his foot, and found that he could wriggle a toe. If he could keep the astrophysicist occupied for just seconds longer . . .
“It’s cold-blooded murder!” he sneered. “And you know it! If all these things were true, any living organism would be killed by the cold of outer space, or the lack of air, or eventually the atomic par-tides would be so far apart that they would cease to be a unit and the organism would disintegrate.”
“Of course those are possibilities,” admitted the scientist pleasantly, “but not necessarily certainties. We have no proof that space is wholly without oxygen. A sufficiently large and attenuated organism might be able to subsist on quantities of oxygen that would be minute and thinly distributed from our standpoint but compact and plentiful from its larger viewpoint. The absolute zero of space, furthermore, is theoretical, not proven. A vacuum does not necessarily imply cold. Besides, the ever-increasing acceleration may carry you through unscathed.
“Come, come, regard this as a wonderful adventure on which anything may happen. You may find yourself like a shell shot from a gun in a void whose speed would theoretically increase by the continual acceleration of as many thousands of feet per second as the per second per second proportion was for the first thousand feet; except that you will increase in dimensions as well as distance. Imagine yourself as huge as the universe! What then? You may burst through and find yourself in a greater universe of which ours is merely a particle or atom! You see, there are all kinds of fascinating speculations. But I fear I must end this absorbing conversation. The paralyzing hypodermic injection might wear off and I would be sorry to have you change your mind at the last minute about being so willing a subject.”
Mertin half turned toward a panel of controls at his side. Aery broke from the lips of Claire as she stood erect. The drug had worn off! At the same instant, quick as a panther, Bob sprang from h
is chair toward Mertin. Like a striking snake, the scientist’s arm darted to the panel and flicked three levers in swift succession, but as fast as he was, Bob was faster and had cleared the danger zone before thunder as from a Niagara cracked through the air.
Claire stood dazed by a whirl of events, and in the midst of his wild plunge Bob’s eyes momentarily widened with surprise. A great section of the laboratory’s roof slid aside; the identical part of the floor, on which the mechanism and the three human beings stood, rose rapidly until it was flush with the rest of the roof, only the star-strewn night sky above. In the first cathode tube a dazzling bolt of lightning roared through blinding violet fluorescent vapors that mingled strangely with it, in the four small tubes weirdly brilliant light of orange, white, green, and fluid blue flowed around sputtering, misty streams, and from the last large tube came a high, a piercing whine of sound, though nothing was visible within it. The silver-black plate was unchanged except for a radioactive glow that spread across its surface.
Mertin ducked sidewise. Bob’s fist raked his cheek but his blind rush carried him on. Mertin dashed for a table on which several implements lay. The best flying tackle that Bob ever made caught the scientist in the legs from behind and he went down before he had gotten within reach of the table. Quick as a cat he bounced out of Bob’s insecure grasp and leaped over his fallen opponent. Almost with the same movement Bob was back on his feet. To his astonishment, the scientist, back to him, was progressing at a fast walk toward the danger zone! Mertin was about halfway between Bob and the neutral surface. Perhaps he had been stunned and was unconsciously walking into danger, but in any case he was still the undefeated enemy, Bob thought, and leaped for his neck to drag him from danger and to put him beyond further harm.
Too late he realized the ruse. Mertin doubled up, with a twist and heave of his arms to send Bob catapulting over his head onto the neutral ground. It was impossible for Bob to halt. He had no time to think. Automatically he did the one thing he could do to save himself from disaster.
As Mertin bent over and heaved, Bob clutched wildly at the lapels of his coat. Thus when Bob was flung forward, his clawing hands jerked and almost held. Not quite, for his grasp broke, and Mertin’s heave had been strong enough so that he fell on the neutral ground. And at the same moment the scientist, off balance and pulled forward by Bob’s clutch, stumbled beside him.
They leaped to their feet together.
A spasm of infinite pain contorted their features as they stood there with the invisible rays pouring full upon them from the radioactive silver-black plate. The figures of the two men blurred strangely, they seemed like images of dream-giantism, and then they were mysteriously gone.
With a hysterical cry, Claire dashed toward the neutral field. Almost she hurled herself onto it, but she halted at its very edge, her eyes wide with terror and bewilderment. There was nothing to show that anyone had ever stood before her.
How long she remained there in a kind of hypnotic stupor, incapable of moving, scarcely hearing the crackle of energy that roared through the tubes, she could not have told. It might have been minutes or hours that she stared at the vacant place where the two men had disappeared.
At some time indefinitely later, she breathed a trembling sigh, and started to turn away. And at that moment, horribly, she saw travesties of human beings standing on the neutral ground, two figures bloody and terrible, for only the shortest of seconds. They vanished as suddenly as they came.
Then Claire had an impression of falling for a black void engulfed her.
❖ ❖ ❖
When Bob was thrown in line with the silver-black plate and the rays that emanated from it, a racking agony seared every fiber and particle of his body with intolerable torment. In an instant the pain passed, but an appalling and bewildering change was transforming the world around him. Claire shrank to pygmy size, he saw her looking at him as though transfixed, and incredibly she dwindled to an invisible mote. He cried out in dismay but she had disappeared. The diminishing laboratory faded from sight. The entire Earth seemed to rush with always mounting and dizzy speed toward some point beneath him, there to become as nothing.
He looked around—and behind him, in the act of springing, loomed the astrophysicist. Red rage swept over Bob, he could have killed the man with physical delight at that minute. But a strange buoyancy had come over him; he found it difficult to move, It was as if the attraction of gravity had been cut off, and as if he was marooned in space, so that there was nothing solid which he could use as a basis from which to hurl himself.
In desperation, he raised his arm and drove it straight for the scientist’s face. The result was weird. Mertin tried to leap aside but only succeeded in floating jerkily as Bob’s fist slowly swung forward and shoved him gently back! For the next few minutes, one of the strangest battles ever fought took place. Mertin had as great trouble in controlling his motions as Bob had, and the most violent exertions of the two resulted in the feeblest of responses. When they did hit each other, it was to see their efforts fantastically wasted. When it became obvious that they were helplessly adrift in space, they ceased struggling and Bob contented himself with keeping a watchful eye on his opponent.
Baffling sensations confused him and destroyed his habitual poise. He felt giddy as though falling from a vast height, or shooting skyward in an elevator running wild. A piercing cold numbed him bat was gone in a flash. The sun hurt his eyes, next the sun and the planets themselves, which had previously seemed to draw closer, shrunk to toy-size, became infinitesimal specks, and finally could not be seen.
A slow yet gradually accelerating coalescence of the stars grew noticeable. They crept toward each other and toward him, at first so imperceptibly as to appear an illusion, then definitely and faster, All the heavens were stirring with a vast, hastening change, a spectacular sight that brought a tinge of awe into the wide-eyed wonder with which he regarded it.
A sense of lightness and buoyancy pervaded him, he was bodiless, weightless, unfettered. Yet he could not determine any specific way in which he differed physically from his old self. He apparently had control of all his faculties, saw and talked and breathed, occasionally had a dim impression of touching something or hearing faint and faraway sounds.
Side by side with these was the hateful presence of Mertin. Only he and Mertin were constant in this weird adventure. But with each second, it became harder to move, and more futile for Bob to do more than fend off the astrophysicist.
It came as a disconcerting shock to notice that they hung in the center of an encircling spheroid cluster of myriads of minute stars that shrank with accelerating swiftness into constantly smaller space. And finally the stars too dwindled to nothing, vanished, became one with him as though inexplicably absorbed into his being.
It came as a more disconcerting shock to see that Mertin’s face drew gradually closer to his own.
What would happen? As before he tried to fend off the other man, but his gestures now had no result. He might as well have tried to push away a cloud of air or gas. Mertin’s features commenced to blur. He was now so close that Bob could not distinguish his outlines clearly. Was this a hallucination? Had he been knocked cold back in the laboratory and was this all merely a hideous dream? He wondered, and could not tell. Mertin became vague, shadowy. He actually seemed to be merging with Bob. And even that feeling passed.
Then came blackness beyond which glowed other points of light. Were they the spiral nebulae beyond the galactic universe? They approached him from all sides like pinpoint rockets looming larger. His thoughts began to wander. Where was Mertin? What lay past the nebulae which were the limit of man’s vision with the highest powered telescopes? Did space go on forever? Or was space expanding as the newer school of astronomers and astrophysicists and mathematicians speculated? Or was Einstein correct in thinking it affected by a curvature which made it eventually return upon itself?
The little lights speeded toward him, swifter and swifter, from a
ll sides. They made him dizzy. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was giddier than ever from the everlasting whirl and contraction. Where would they end?
A violent nausea claimed him. He could not concentrate or see clearly. The streaking light-spots had all disappeared, everywhere was eternal blackness and void, stupendous beyond imagination, and escaping the farthest analysis of reason.
Great, unknown forces dominated him, a storming flux of mutation and involution transformed him, ultimate, physical laws beyond any with which he had ever come in contact or of which he had ever dreamed began to operate. His nausea became a terrible sickness. He half-seemed to see fiery points of light shoot away from him and become larger. Everything grew hazy, dim, and unthinkable. A tinge of redness began to color the black.
Then there was a period of vacancy in which he remembered nothing, though he felt the flame of life burn faint and low. He was quite unconscious. . ..
After what might have been an instant or a cycle, the giddiness returned, became again the sickening nausea of before, and eventually passed away. He felt as he imagined a drowning man might have when saved the instant he was about to go under for the last time. Somehow, he knew that he had stood on the edge of the great precipice. His sense of relief next began to fade under the impact of the impressions that again flooded his eyes.
Everything was the reverse of what it had been before. Motes of light streamed out of him, sped away, grew to points and steadily expanding balls, but infinitely faster than before, so fast that he often could not be sure that they were real. They whirled from him and shot into space and yet as they shot swelled into clusters of points like miniature nebulae.