The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “How far out are you going?” asked Alora, in a subdued voice.

  “As far as we need to, for undeniable proof,” answered Fostar. “Perhaps to the very Edge of Space!”

  The girl shuddered. “You make it sound real, the way you say it so sepulchrally!” She laughed shortly. “But you’ll excuse me if I just keep on believing that my father’s right—that you’re fanatics—and on a fool’s errand!”

  Fostar conquered a stab of anger. “You’ll see!” he promised grimly. “You’ll see!” challenged the girl. “None of us will see!” came Angus Macluff’s pessimistic grumble. “Unless fate is very, very kind!”

  CHAPTER IV

  INFINITY’S BOUNDARY

  ON AND on the wayward ship hurtled, carrying its four passengers toward the rim of things. Behind them—nothing. Before them—a ghostly, mocking universe.

  A chill descended over their spirits. Even Alora Crodell, with her skeptical attitude, grew subdued and kept her opinions to herself. Angus Macluff’s dolorous mutterings ran the gamut of pessimism. Dr. Bronzun’s calm eyes had a certain bleak tenseness in them.

  A succession of strange phenomena occurred.

  Once, at mealtime, they were unable to sweeten their coffee, though they heaped in sugar. They tried the sugar separately, to find it absolutely tasteless. Dr. Bronzun made a tentative test with his chemical kit and announced that it had changed to a polysaccharide. A few minutes later it was normal sugar again. They had passed through an area of thinned space-time in which disaccharide carbon-chains could not exist!

  At another time, Fostar, talking to Angus, found the engineer looking at him blankly, as though he heard nothing. Then Fostar suddenly realized he couldn’t hear his own voice!—nor any other sound. There was an utter, grave-like silence—a complete, eerie absence of sound—in the ship’s interior, for several nerve-wracking minutes. Then sound came back again, like an avalanche of thunder, but it was welcome.

  Dr. Bronzun conjectured that the laws of sound propagation had temporarily become dispelled. Perhaps, as with the shift of spectrum, there had been a shift of sound vibration, but so much that it passed the range of their ears.

  Angus Macluff unwittingly demonstrated the power of thought, on another occasion. Peering at the cabin’s thermometer, he let out a shout and began mopping his forehead. The temperature read 96 degrees Centigrade!—almost the boiling point of water, and far above the temperature any man could stand for more than a few seconds. Dr. Bronzun calmed their momentary panic by simply pointing out that it wasn’t that hot. The temperature had not changed a degree. The thermometer had undergone an individual phenomenon.

  Angus Macluff, at this, stuffed his handkerchief away sheepishly. The sweat on his forehead had been very real, however.

  The staid laws of geometry underwent a baffling metamorphosis for one period. They suddenly found their eyes playing them tricks. Small objects looked large, large ones small; curves were straight, and edges were looped. A hand moved nearer to the eyes shrank; moved away, it loomed large. It was similar to the hazy effects of rotating space-time, with the trans-space drive, but much more clear-cut and nightmarishly real. Fostar barely choked off a yelp of dismay as Alora’s bodyless head, multiplied a hundred times, seemed to roll at his feet. Most baffling of all, closing their eyes did no good. The distorted visions went on unabated, till the phenomenon had run its course.

  “We were rotated at another angle to space-time for a moment,” remarked the scientist. “Thank heaven we didn’t stay in it!”

  But they were considerably more startled the day certain objects in the ship could not be picked up. Fostar reached for the drinking cup under the water-carboy, but his fingers met, empty. He reached again, and clearly saw his fingers pass through the material of the metal cup, as though it were an unreal image. He felt only a slight tingling, but nothing tangible.

  Angus Macluff came from the pantry, his face wild, to stammer that he had tried ten times to pick up a coffee can, without being able to so much as feel itl Dr. Bronzun excitedly examined the objects, passing through them a variety of solid materials. All went through unchanged, untouched. Suddenly, some slight disturbance occurred that caused the objects affected to float up into the air and drift toward the hull. Vainly, they tried to catch them and knock them down, but it was no better than trying to grasp smoke, or a moonbeam.

  All of the objects but one drifted through the hull and were never seen again. The last object, one of Dr. Bronzun’s spectroscopic gratings, stopped just before it touched the hull, and gently slid toward the ship’s center of mass. The phenomenon had passed. The grating was solid again, and the scientist caught it, rather gratefully.

  “Another law of nature violated!” he observed. “That two objects cannot occupy the same unit spacetime!”

  Angus Macluff’s face reflected a resignation that had grown with the passing days, and added phenomena.

  “I like not these experiences,” he sighed. “Mark my words, gentlemen”—he stared hard at Alora, as he always did using that term—“one of them will be our finish!”

  Dr. Bronzun waved a hand, dismissing the engineer’s customary foreboding.

  But Fostar was thoughtful. He had felt for some days that their risks were mounting geometrically with every added linear mile toward the Edge of Space.

  “Perhaps we should be cautious,” he said to the scientist. “The phenomena are becoming more numerous, more prolonged, and more threatening. Space-time must be thinning rapidly. So far we’ve met only isolated patches of thinness, like those that have even reached Earth. But if we should happen to run into a wide belt or area—”

  He broke off the sentence. “Besides—” He hesitated, then went on without looking at Alora. “We have an added passenger. Our oxygen consumption has been increased, by that amount. We have to take that into account.”

  Fostar had tried to keep from showing it, but he knew that a faint trace of bitterness had crept into his voice. Out of the comer of his eye he saw the girl’s head toss.

  Dr. Bronzun nodded, without hesitation. “Begin deceleration,” he ordered. “We’re eleven days out, and almost three light-years from the sun. That is far enough, perhaps. The final Edge of Space can’t be more than two light-years further. I think all the proofs I will need can be gathered here, however.”

  FOSTAR sat before his controls, rather relieved that they were to begin deceleration. Dr. Bronzun started up his atomic-generator, and again the eery, lambent glow spread a colorful halo about the great coils of his trans-space drive.

  Fostar expertly turned the ship 180 degrees with offside blasts. Then, with the rocket jets firing into their line of flight, he brought the engine to its usual operating rate.

  Deceleration had begun, slowing their colossal speed of 100 times the velocity of light. In twelve hours, they would be stationary, relative to the sun they had left behind.

  Fostar heaved a sigh of relief. The trans-space drive, not tested as fully as they might have wanted for this hazardous trip, was proving itself equal to its task. He looked out of the conning port. Now, quite naturally, the region of the firmament before the ship’s nose was rayless, blank. The mirage-universe had taken up its position at the rear.

  Then another image appeared, reflected from the glass. It was Alora Crodell’s face. She was beside him, looking at him reproachfully, half angrily.

  “You made it rather pointed, a moment ago, that I was an unwanted passenger!” she said in injured tones.

  He grunted noncommittally.

  “We got along so well all this time,” she continued, her tone becoming softer, “that I thought we might become—friends!”

  “I understood it to be a truce,” Fostar returned shortly. “You still think this is a fool’s errand?”

  “Of course!” Alora returned sweetly. “But I’m still glad I’m along—for the thrill!”

  Fostar glanced at her. “That’s all it means to you?” he asked incredulously. “Haven’t any o
f those phenomena convinced you that something lies out here beyond human experience?”

  “I’m only convinced,” returned the girl evenly, “that you’ve exceeded the speed of light. The other effects may be due to that.”

  “You’re as hard-headed as your father,” commented Fostar, bluntly. His face was set as he went on. “All these have been the signposts of the future fate of Earth. We will return with news of—doom!”

  The girl shivered involuntarily. “No you can’t be right,” she whispered. “You can’t be! My father must be right—that you are fanatics, cranks. When I saw my father that day, after you had left, he said you were just being young and brave and foolish—about going out to the Beyond and proving it. That’s why I tried to stop you. I didn’t want it on my father’s head that he had driven you to it.”

  “There are many things on Marten Crodell’s head—” Fostar said stonily.

  “You’re wrong!” the girl blazed instantly. “You misunderstand him, as so many do. He’s trying to do good, with the power in his hands. He has a vision of the day when all his land holdings on other planets will be useful and productive—”

  “For his profit!” Fostar put in succinctly.

  The girl choked. “You—you beast!” she spat out.

  Fostar’s temper instantly flared, in keeping with her own. “And you,” he countered, “are a wilful, stubborn—”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” came Angus Macluff’s chiding tones. “Words like that would not be pleasant on your lips—if at that moment they became the last you ever spoke!”

  Fostar looked at Alora, aware of the significance of those words. Certainly, with what ominous things lay outside the ship, their human differences dwindled to the utterly trivial. But at the same time, the spark of anger hadn’t quite cooled within him. He waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t—waiting for him—he turned away. But he hated himself for his own stubbornness. They didn’t speak to each other again for many hours.

  TWELVE hours later, the constant deceleration under the miracle-working of the trans-space drive had reduced their velocity to the point of one light-speed.

  As suddenly as was to be expected, the invisible universe they had left behind leaped into view. All the sixth magnitude and larger nebulae and stars flamed into the backdrop of space, to their eyes. In Dr. Bronzun’s electro-magnifier, all the other billions of spacial bodies peppered the interstices. He had looked for them, almost as though fearing they might not be there.

  Somehow, the sight of the normal universe, hidden from their eyes for twelve days, struck cheer in their hearts—though in the next instant, seeing the sun only as a brilliant first-magnitude star, they felt the depressing realization of the three tremendous light-years that lay between.

  Men had never before seen their primary from such a remote vantage.

  Yet the greater chill came to them as they turned to view the Beyond. The mirage-universe had vanished, and now the true Edge of Space loomed before them—ultra-black, starless, rayless, horribly empty. There could be nothing comprehensible to human senses beyond it—neither matter, nor light, nor gravity, nor cosmic-rays, nor space-time.

  “What lies on the other side of the Edge of Space,” mused Dr. Bronzun, “would to us be the absolute zero of nothingness!”

  “And that’s what Earth will become when it crosses that Edge!” muttered Fostar grimly. He kept his eye on the instruments. When their velocity had become zero, they would begin gathering the proof for which they had made this unprecedented trip toward nothingness.

  He felt a little queer as he looked at the velocimeter—not because of its reading, which was quite correct, but due to the instrument itself. It looked, somehow, a little larger than it should. He rubbed his eyes, shook his head, and looked away. Hallucination, of course. He was tired from the long stretch of vigilance during deceleration.

  But he sneaked another look at the velocimeter. It looked even larger now! Furthermore, the other instruments appeared oversize also! Startled, he looked around—

  “Rolan, what’s wrong?” It was Alora’s voice, from back of him. “Why does everything look—larger!”

  Fostar darted his eyes about. Everything had become larger, and was becoming larger with each passing moment. The nearest port began to loom like a round window. The opposite walls had receded and lengthened. His instruments and pilot-board were now of proportions that might have suited a giant.

  And his clothes! They had suddenly become misfits, baggy and sagging into heavy folds.

  “We’re shrinking!” Angus Macluff’s hoarse voice boomed out. “This is our end, gentlemen!” His solemn tones held almost satisfaction at an end he had prophesied so many times. At any other time, Fostar would have laughed at the ridiculous figure he cut, with his clothing hanging about him like voluminous drapes.

  “No, we’re not shrinking!” Dr. Bronzun contradicted, pointing out of the port. “The view is wider. The ship, and everything in it except out bodies, is expanding!”

  “Just a matter of view,” mumbled the engineer. “In either case, we’re done for!”

  “The ship is subliming—passing, from a solid to a gaseous state!” conjectured Dr. Bronzun rapidly. “Again a natural law broken, for there is no heat. Eventually, the walls will dissolve from around us! We must have passed into an area where space-time is very thin—”

  “And something tells me this area is large!” burst out Fostar. “We’ve got to stop going deeper into it, and get back to normal space-time. Angus—get at your engine. Dr. Bronzun—the trans-space drive. I’m going to use full deceleration. And pray!”

  “No use!” croaked the engineer. “Not even a miracle can save us now!” Nevertheless, he sprang to his engine with grim alacrity, and began pumping the emergency fuel-feed with a frenzied energy that few men, far more optimistic, could have equalled.

  Fostar stood up on his pilot seat, to better reach controls that had moved back, and grasped the power-lever. With a soundless prayer on his lips, he drew it toward him, notch by notch. The rocket blastings became a muted thunder through the walls of the ship. The hull began to creak and groan as strain built up. He pulled the handle to its last notch and held his breath.

  It was seldom that a rocket engine was used at its topmost rate. Vibrational effects were dangerous. But Fostar had an added worry—the trans-space drive. If that should weaken now, under the added stresses, they would never emerge from the space-time thinned area into which they had plunged at almost light-speed.

  Seconds passed—seconds that loomed as large as the chronometer that ticked them off. The expanding effect had gone on steadily. Fostar felt like a dwarf within the castle of a giant. There was some difficulty in breathing, too, as though the air molecules, growing, were passing into their lungs with difficulty.

  It was weird, incredible—but it was happening.

  Watching the velocimeter needle dip as the roaring engine hammered down their speed, Fostar suddenly found Alora Crodell at his side. Her hand touched his. He looked into her eyes. They were amber, and soft.

  He knew what she was thinking—that in the face of death, they had been foolish to quarrel. Something sprang into his mind. It was all so starkly simple—why this elfin girl could make him so angry with her and then so angry with himself.

  He grasped her hand. He must tell her quickly, in the fleeting moments left. “Alora, from the first moment—” he began.

  “I know,” she said tenderly, eagerly. “And now you know why I really stowed away—”

  That was all they needed to say. To Rolan Fostar, the dread of their present peril—even the greater oppression of Earth’s doom—seemed to slide away. The whole universe dissolved into those clear amber eyes, with their shining light. He felt her lips touch his, clingingly.

  Angus Macluff’s grimy lips formed words unheard above the roar of his engine: “Ah, gentlemen, what a sweet way to pass into eternity!”

  Fostar’s senses darkened. He felt his lungs s
tifling. He heard Alora’s agonized gasping. He could picture their final fate—failing through the ship’s walls as these change into drifting molecular smoke. Out into the cold of space . . .

  Doomed!

  His mind dipped into oblivion . . .

  CHAPTER V

  “HAPPY OTHER EARTH”

  FOSTAR awoke to the miracle of being saved. Slumped over the pilot board, he brought up his aching head with a groan and looked around. Alora lay sprawled on the floor, eyes closed, pale as death. Dr. Bronzun, in a similar condition, was slumped beside his trans-space drive.

  But Angus Macluff, fume streaked, still stood before his engine, pumping wearily with his great hands as though he had been doing it for all eternity. Fostar glanced at the velocimeter. The needle was climbing! They had come to a stop and were already flying back, out of the danger zone. Saved! The weird expansion of the ship around them had also passed its peak and was rapidly reducing again.

  “Angus I We came out of it after all!” Fostar yelled joyfully. “You did it, Angus—pumping away at that engine!” He laughed crazily. “And you were so sure we were doomed!”

  The engineer stopped suddenly, slid to the floor and sat there looking up scratching his grizzled thatch of hair. He seemed almost offended.

  “Well, mark my words, lad, this is just a temporary reprieve. Our luck can’t hold out forever.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the other two had been revived and Fostar cut down the engine to cruising range. The ship had scuttled back, well out of range of the area that had held such fatal threat. Things were back to normal size. At Dr. Bronzun’s suggestion, Fostar maneuvered the ship to a virtual halt, relative to space-time.

  “The infinite has seen fit to save us,” was the scientist’s only comment. “We are undoubtedly as close to the Edge of Space as we can get without disaster. Now”—his voice rang a little—“we’ll make the records for doubting Earth!”

  Busy hours followed. With all helping, Dr. Bronzun set up his various instruments.