by Earl
According to their plans, Fostar piloted the ship in the line of Earth’s extended North Pole, in order to rise above the plane of the Solar System. This gave them, in a few hours, a clear approach to the Beyond. They wanted no worry of asteroids, comets and planets ahead of them when they switched to the trans-space drive.
Finally the moment came to apply its wonder-working influence. They had decelerated to a stop and were hovering, relative to the sun. Dr. Bronzun switched on the atomic-generator that fed the coils with power. A lambent glow sprang about the huge helix, pulsing with nameless radiation. Watching the dials, the scientist carefully manipulated energies that slowly built up a strange, supermagnetic field. They could feel it, subtly working through their bodies and through the air and space around them.
Suddenly, with the last turn of a rheostat, their vision wavered. The ship seemed to twist impossibly, at queer angles. The curves of the cabin writhed into incredible distortions. Their bodies seemed to turn inside out. Outside, the universe whirled and danced, and all the stars became aimless fireflies, darting about.
Fostar almost cried out in alarm till he remembered that he had gone through the same experience during the test flight, but in lesser degree. He clutched at his seat’s hand-hold and waited for the sensations to quiet down. Angus Macluff’s florid face peered from beside the rocket engine, with a stark anticipation of immediate death.
But gradually their swimming senses cleared and things again looked and felt more or less normal. Not quite, however, for there was still a lurking wrongness in the air.
Dr. Bronzun heaved a sigh of relief. “For a moment,” he muttered truthfully, “I thought the field might not confine itself and—explode! But the danger’s over. We have been slightly—ever so slightly—rotated at an angle to ordinary space-time. Enough so that inertia is greatly reduced.”
To demonstrate, he smashed his fist against the metal wall with all the power of his arm. The blow would ordinarily have crushed his knuckles to bleeding pulp. Instead, there was the faintest of sounds at the impact and his fist bounced lightly back! It would have done as little harm to batter his head against the metal!
“That is the ultimate secret of the drive,” explained the scientist. “Reducing inertia. Now, each thrust of our rockets will be a thousand times as effective.”
Fostar started the rockets and with a smooth purr they drummed out. Strangely, he hardly felt motion, thought he knew the ship was slipping through space like a flaming arrow. His own reduced inertia eliminated acceleration effects.
Under the trans-space drive, velocity mounted prodigiously—
Fostar looked out upon the Solar System. Though he had known it all his life, it was always startling to see the divided firmament—half crammed with stars, half achingly empty. Sol and its planets lay at the crest of the stars, nearer to the barren region than any other sun.
And it was drifting out to—absolute nothingness!
This was the reason for their daring argosy out to the Beyond, to forewarn of that peril. But would they come back? And would their tale be believed? Fostar shook his head and set his jaw grimly. No use to conjecture in advance.
An hour later, they reached the speed of light.
Though expecting it, it came as a shock when all the universe behind them blinked out. They were now going faster than light rays from the stars, and consequently could not see them. The sun winked out, and all the planets.
They seemed lost in infinity!
Angus Macluff suddenly gave a sharp, half-disgusted gasp. “Look!” he exclaimed, pointing ahead. “The ship switched around, somehow. We’re going toward the stars—not the Beyond!”
Seemingly, it was so. The heavens before the nose of the ship had suddenly blazed out with stars. Stars that shouldn’t be there. It was quite reversed. The chilling Beyond now flamed with pinpoints, as the universe behind had vanished.
“No, Angus,” Dr. Bronzun explained. “We are now overtaking light-rays that were ahead of the ship. The image of the universe ahead is just a mirage—a past reflection of the true, but invisible universe behind us!”
Fostar increased acceleration. An hour later, Pluto resolved into a small disk. Ordinary rocket ships took better than four months to reach this outermost planet! As they passed its orbit, Pluto vanished, its lagging light rays no longer able to catch the flying craft.
NOW before them stretched a vacancy almost inconceivable. To penetrate even one-fifth of the distance toward the Beyond would require months at their present velocity of five light-speeds, and they had supplies only for one month, all they were able to carry in the small craft.
Fostar stepped up the acceleration cautiously. Dr. Bronzun kept an eagle eye on his trans-space drive, and Angus Macluff bestowed almost loving care on the droning engine. The latter, always mumbling to himself in dire phrases, once looked over his shoulder fearfully.
“A fourth passenger rides with us!” he said dourly. “Death! Mark my words, gentlemen, we’ll never—”
“Quiet, Angus!” snapped Fostar, though ordinarily he disregarded or laughed at the engineer’s dismal comments. “We need a high morale for this trip. This is not like hopping from one planet to the next.”
The engineer subsided to inarticulate grumblings.
But Fostar felt, too, that the fourth passenger rode with them, waiting—waiting for the least little slip of the engine, or the trans-space drive. Or, by comic mischance, a lone meteor might intersect their course. At their stupendous velocity, the collision, even with a pebble, would mean instantaneous disruption. Their nerves grew more and more tense as the hours passed and their velocity mounted to staggering heights. Their velocimeter, specially designed, measured the sweep of space atoms past their hull.
This speed, ten hours later, reached the colossal figure of 100 times the speed of light—almost 20 million miles a second! The trip from Earth to Mars, at that same rate, would occupy just two seconds! Even to negotiate the great four billion mile lap to Pluto, only three minutes!
Fostar, whose hand at the master controls had brought about this astronomical speed, felt dazed. He had the feeling of a god, for a moment, a transcendental being whose fingers touched ultimate energies. He shook his head, then. After all, it was not due to him, but to the genius of Dr. Bronzun.
The white-haired old scientist’s face was stamped with a quiet triumph. He had the right to feel like a god. His soaring mind had burst the prison of outer space. He had, in a sense, taken the universe in his two hands and squeezed it down to Man’s proportions.
Eventually, through this, mankind would inherit the stars!
Dr. Bronzun stirred now. After one more vigilant glance at the instruments of his trans-space drive, he turned his head to Fostar.
“That’s enough velocity now,” he said. “At this rate, we’ll cross a light-year of space in about 3½ days. We’ll be able to reach close to the Beyond within the limit of our supplies.” His eyes shone and his thin hands caressed a boxed transformer. “The trans-space drive has worked beautifully—beautifully!”
As Fostar locked the controls at zero, and the vague sensation of their hardly felt inertialess acceleration stopped altogether, their tense nerves eased. For the first time in those long hours, Fostar brought a smile to his lips. Even Angus Macluff was faintly cheerful.
“It’s a miracle we’re yet alive,” he vouched grudgingly. Then, as though he had betrayed himself, he added. “But miracles only happen once, gentlemen!”
“Damn your cheerless tongue!” said Fostar lightly. He snapped his fingers. “I have a hollow feeling and I think it’s hunger,” he continued jovially. “Angus, see what you can find in the pantry, like a good fellow.”
“I think we deserve a meal,” smiled Dr. Bronzun.
“May it not be our last!” observed the engineer as he shuffled to the tiny food-storage room. He went in and they could hear him rummaging around. He emerged a moment later, his face queerly shocked.
“We have a fo
urth passenger,” he said slowly.
“Angus, you’re repeating yourself,” grinned Fostar. “That’s not usual of you. Now—”
“Come and see!” interposed the engineer. “We have a stowaway!”
CHAPTER III
INTO THE BEYOND
GLANCING at each other, Dr. Bronzun and Fostar ran to the pantry door. Looking in, Fostar could not hold back a startled cry.
She sat on a sealed case of food, in the packed supply room, calmly munching on a vitaminized biscuit that she had taken from its cellophane wrapper.
“Alora!” gasped Fostar. “Alora Templeton! Good Lord—” He stopped, half-choking in surprise. “Oh, hello there!” she returned gaily. “Hungry? Have a bite with me. There’s plenty here!”
Fostar recovered himself with an effort. “How did you get aboard?” he demanded.
“Simply enough,” she explained. “I sneaked in the shed the night before you left, found this spot in the ship, and here I am. I knew when you were leaving because I overheard your plans the day you came back from Marten Crodell’s place.”
“It was you at the door, then,” observed Angus Macluff. “Eavesdropping!”
The girl nodded, unabashed. Her manner was airy, self-possessed.
“But why?” queried Fostar, still staring at her as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Why did you come along?”
“I’m naturally impulsive, I suppose,” she smiled. Then she became serious, setting her biscuit aside. “To persuade you not to make the flight!” she revealed, in sober tones. “I meant to convince you that you were foolish to risk your lives in a mad attempt to prove your queer theories. I thought with myself aboard, you would turn back. But I fell asleep here. The next thing I knew, the ship was taking off. I must have bumped my head then—I went unconscious. I came to later, but then something queer happened. Everything seemed to twist and—and become wrong!”
Fostar nodded slightly. That must have been when they changed to the trans-space drive.
“I guess I simply fainted then,” the girl continued. “I wasn’t feeling any too strong after that bump on my head. I came to again just a few minutes ago and thought a little food would help me. Just then your man here came in. That’s all the story.”
Fostar was still glaring at her.
“Of all the insane tricks—to stowaway on this ship!” he exploded. “Turn back? It’s too late to turn back now. Do you know where we are? We’re 300 billion miles from the sun, and our present velocity is one hundred times the speed of light—toward the Beyond!” He made a grimace and added, “If you can understand that!”
Alora’s elfin face had paled. But instantly she flared. “I can understand it!” she blazed. “I’m not a child. But”—her voice faltered—“but I had no idea, when you spoke of a new drive, that you could really—” She broke off, as the stunning realization fully struck her. “300 billion miles!” she breathed, her hand at her throat.
“It’s a mite further than you’d expect,” said Angus Macluff half-pityingly. Clumsily, he patted her shoulder. “But don’t you fear. We’re not dead—yet!” It was the nearest he could come to being comforting.
“A woman—along on this trip!” muttered Fostar. “She—”
“Don’t say that, lad!” Angus interposed quickly. He lowered his voice. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to have a woman along on any new flight? We must talk of her as though she were a man!”
Dr. Bronzun shook his head, though not because of the engineer’s superstition. “I think perhaps we should turn back. We can’t risk her life—”
“No!” said Fostar grimly. “It’s her own fault for being aboard. We didn’t invite her, or kidnap her. Besides, this is too important for her presence to make any difference.” He faced her. “We’re going out to the Beyond, to prove that in it lies doom—Earth’s doom. Marten Crodell doesn’t believe, nor the rest of Earth. We’ll prove it to them!”
ALORA was staring at him, skeptically. “You’re wrong, of course,” she stated evenly. “You’re fanatics. Marten Crodell is right. He had the best astronomers check, after Dr. Bronzun’s first announcement Earth is in no danger. But you are, even if this journey succeeds. Marten Crodell will crush you with his power, when you get back!”
Her voice had almost become impassioned. “You must use your reason. You must! Marten Crodell—”
“Marten Crodell be damned!” barked Fostar. “I’m not afraid of him. He’s the most hard-headed, blundering, grasping, thieving—”
“Stop!” The girl had come to her feet, face furious. “Don’t call him names like that! I won’t stand for it. I—”
“Why not?” grunted Fostar, surprised at her vehemence.
“Because I’m his—daughter!”
“Daughter!” gasped Fostar. “Marten Crodell’s daughter? But your name—”
“It Alora Templeton Crodell! I didn’t tell you that night, because I knew you were angry with ihy father.”
Rolan Fostar had a more bewildered feeling than when the transspace drive had brought the queer wrongness. This was wrong, too—that this attractive, intelligent young woman should be the daughter of Earth’s most autocratic moneylord. No, it was right! Too bitterly right. Things dovetailed immediately. Her own spoiled attitude—her contempt of their theory—her outspoken criticism. They were all of the Marten Crodell flavor.
He moved away from her so obviously that she flushed. “I might have known it!” he said;, with cold rage. “You’re just as stubborn, narrow-minded—”
“Stow it, lad,” interjected Angus Macluff. “You might at least use a civil tongue to the little la—person. Look—the poor child is ill—”
The girl’s flush had changed to a ghastly paleness. She swayed on her feet and the engineer leaped forward to catch her. But Fostar was there ahead of him. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to a bunk. His emotions altered inexplicably as he looked down at her closed eyes and drawn features. He couldn’t feel angry with her any more.
“Take care of her, Angus,” he muttered. He turned away, knowing that the gnarled old engineer would doctor her up skilfully with the supplies of the medicine chest.
Angus announced, a while later, that the girl—the “new gentleman” he called her—had passed into a quiet sleep. Also tired from the long, tense drive of the past day, the three men retired. His bunk usurped by the girl, Angus rolled himself in a blanket on the floor. There was no need of a guard awake. The air and heating equipment, long a standard item of space-ships, was automatic.
The next “morning”—by the chronometer—Rolan Fostar peered out of the side port. Nothing had changed. Back of them was still an almost impossible blackness, where the hidden universe and its laggard light impulses lay. It hurt the eyes to look into that rayless cauldron.
Ahead lay the shimmering mirage-universe, no nearer, no farther—unchanged. Because of their supervelocity, they were in reality seeing an older and older picture, like the unwinding of a reel backward, but it meant nothing. The stars, to human eyes, had held their configuration for untold centuries.
Fostar was aware when Alora Crodell arose. He heard Angus Macluff inquire solicitously after her health, and her reply that though a little weak, she was all right. He felt her gaze on the back of his head and turned to meet her amber eyes. Pie met obvious coolness, though not hostility.
Fostar turned his eyes away quickly. Then, ashamed of himself, he whirled again.
“Look here,” he said gruffly, “we’re going to be aboard this ship together for some time. Let’s at least be half-way civil to each other.”
“That’s the right spirit, lad!” approved Angus Macluff. He added dolefully, “With our hours numbered, we should have no quarrels among us.”
Fostar saw the instant reaction in the girl. She smiled disarmingly, and came forward.
“I’m glad you said that!” she murmured. Then she gasped as her wide eyes took in the panorama of space, it was breath-taking, at first glance.
“I’m glad I’m along,” she said abruptly, taking a deep breath. “This is such a strange journey, so thrilling and adventurous!”
Her face was aglow. Lit by the soft radiance of the reflected universe, her elfin features captivated Fostar’s interest. She was lovely; that was the plain fact.
And then, suddenly, she was hideous.
Her fair complexion changed to a ghastly green. Auburn hair became a violent purple. Her teeth, from between her slightly parted lips, shone with a stained crimson. Her amber eyes gleamed stark white!
Alarmed, Fostar saw that the girl was looking at him with horror! He flashed his eyes around and saw a mad scene of riotous colors, as though gallons of lurid paint had been dumped in the ship. The silvery walls were funereal blue, instruments mottled in purple, yellow and scarlet hues. Angus Macluff’s florid face was a venomous emerald, his heavy eyebrows dripping with bright orange!
Dr. Bronzun’s excited voice clipped out, as he scurried for his instrument bench:
“A shift in the spectrum!” he informed. “Another manifestation of natural laws suspended. Nothing dangerous. It simply means that all the light around us has changed its wave-length a good many microns. I must measure the amount—”
Alora laughed weakly, in the following relief. “You look like a monster from some other universe!” she said impishly to Fostar. Then she looked in her hand-mirror and shrieked. The eternal feminine came to the fore and she tried to soften the ravages of the misplaced spectrum with cosmetics. The result, if anything, was more frightful, as she applied purple powder and indigo lipstick.
The phenomenon passed in five minutes, and all was normal again.
“Spacetime is thinning gradually, as we approach the Edge of Space,” murmured Dr. Bronzun. “The cosmic-rays have fallen off ten percent.”