by Earl
York and Vera waited breathlessly. At last one of the Three Eternals answered groggily, as though he, too, had just emerged from the same suspended state following the explosion.
“The ship of the Three Eternals. We just survived a tremendous explosion, miraculously. Who are you? Where are you from?” The psychic voice was staccato, peremptory.
“From Earth.” And then, typically, the Eternal spoke angrily. “But who are you to make demands? I resent your insolence.”
“Earth!” It seemed to be a startled exclamation from the alien. “The J-X seventy-seven creatures! You’ve come to rescue—” The words broke off. Then came a horribly merciless tone. “I am sorry.”
In the view-plate, York and Vera saw a green energy-ray stab from the alien ship to the Three Eternals. In a supernal flash of sparks, the ship of the Three Eternals vanished!
The black dot of the alien ship hovered for a moment, as though to make sure of their work. Then it scudded away, disappearing into the void beyond.
Vera shuddered. “I’m glad the Three Eternals are gone, though I’ve never wanted the death of a human before. They were such evil beings.”
“Evil beings?” York’s voice was tense. “What about those ruthless aliens? They did us a favor, destroying the Three Eternals, but we’d get the same if they found us. Who are they? From what system? Why are they patrolling space?”
Vera had no answer.
“I wonder where we are,” York mused. “We have a lot of things to do and find out. First, this queer doubling of our sight and voices.”
A STRANGE expression came over his face. He strode to his laboratory workroom and for the next few fours labored with his intricate instruments. Vera brought in hot food, in answer to their reawakened appetites. She found her husband tapping his finger on the barrel of an electronic spectroscope. He was frowning, and behind the frown was startled disbelief.
“Tony,” Vera asked, “have you found out where we are? Let’s return to Earth. I don’t like the thought of meeting those aliens.”
“Return to Earth?” York had started. He gripped her shoulders. “I just made a rough measurement of the velocity of light here. It’s only a hundred-and-eighty-one miles a second—five thousand miles a second slower than it should be! And the velocity of sound is quite a bit below eleven hundred feet per second!”
“That accounts for the doubling phenomenon,” Vera returned quickly, for she was no less of a scientist than her husband. “Our eyes and ears are attuned to different rates. But, Tony, you look so worried. At the same instant it struck her. “Why should light and sound travel slower?” she gasped.
For an answer, York swept his hand toward the nearest port. Out there lay the eternal stars, but what had happened to them? Even they were changed. In their many lifetimes of wandering, Anton York and Vera had come to know the star map almost as minutely as one knows the streets of a city.
“Those are not our stars,” York said in a low voice. “Vera, this is not the Universe we used to know!”
After eating in stunned silence, York spoke again, more calmly.
“I see it quite clearly now. The explosion blew us up as a unit—completely out of normal space-time—into a new universe! I’ve suspected for some time that different universes lie side by side, or wrapped up in one another. They occupy the same space and time, but not the same space-time. Notice that distinction. It’s like taking two chemical reagents and mixing them in various proportions, to get many different compounds.
“This space-time, with its ‘shorter’ time and ‘longer’ space—judging from the low light speed—is separate and distinct from our Universe. Yet the two universes are contained in one another like alcohol in water. Earth, in one sense, is no more than a few miles away in space and a few hours in time. In another sense, it’s remoter than the most distant nebula and several eternities removed on an all-embracing time scale.”
Vera’s brows came together over a white anxious face.
“Tony, it confuses me. I’m afraid. I feel as if we’re dropping into an endless pit here. I never felt that way in our space. Tony, let’s go back to our Universe right away.”
He shook his head, telling her with his eyes to prepare for a greater shock.
“We can’t. At least for the present. Our engine, our energy-coils, our generators—all our motivating machines are dead. I tried them. You see, there’s slower energy here too. We’re marooned in this other universe, and drifting like a wandering comet. We’re helpless, too. If those patrolling aliens happen to spy us. . . .”
York left the rest omniously unsaid.
CHAPTER II
Mystery of the Domes
BUT this did not happen. In the following year, York spent mind-numbing hours in his laboratory. Vera took down an endless series of notes. Together they sought to readjust their science to the new conditions.
In one thing, nature’s laws of compensation were automatic. Their eyes and ears learned gradually to work under new conditions. The irksome doubling effects disappeared. But all else was still a mystery. York became irritable.
“I’m getting nowhere,” he raged. “I feel as helpless as a baby. In our Universe I had a wealth of super-science, by Earthly standards, at my fingertips. Now I can’t even make a single reaction motor. Rockets here don’t obey Newton’s Third Law! It’s getting me down. I’m like a Stone Age man looking around and wondering what it’s all about. And, Vera, I don’t like it.”
He went on, betraying a nervousness he had kept under control rigidly.
“The Three Eternals had no chance to fight back when they were destroyed. Neither would we, if that patrol ship found us. But that isn’t all.”
Both knew without saying that there were other dangers. Already their stored air and food supplies were running low. In their own Universe, York would have laughed and transmuted oxygen and protein from sheer metal, bending the atoms to his will. But here, in a maddening universe with a new set of laws and measurements, he had less command over circumstances than a Neanderthal Man in some 20th century city.
“That sun, Tony,” Vera whispered. “It’s far past first magnitude now. We’re drifting straight toward it. Another year—”
She left the appalling thought unfinished. In another year, unless they achieved a workable motor, they would fall into the huge, blazing sun. For a year it had grown steadily brighter athwart their drifting course. But they might starve first, or be caught by the patrol ship.
They had three ways to die, in this strange, mad universe, none of them pleasant.
THE alien sun grew until it was the size of Sol from the distance of Pluto. They began to feel the slight acceleration, as its tentacles of gravity clutched at their ship. It was a strange, huge star, red as Antares.
Periodically, every twenty-two days, it increased in brightness. At its maximum it was almost blue-hot. Then it declined to the red state again. On and on the cycle went, with the precise regularity of a delicately made clock.
“A Cepheid variable,” York said. “Like the Cepheids of our universe, it obeys some mysterious law of waxing and waning atomic-disintegration in its interior. And similarly, if the balance slips at some time, it will explode into a flaming nova. These are very unstable stars. If there are planets—”
He searched with his telescope. It was small, but through a principle of television magnification, had a resolving power ten times greater than a 200 inch reflector. He swept all the regions around the pulsing sun.
“Yes, it has planets, thirteen of them,” he announced finally. “We’re drifting toward the tenth outermost. We won’t fall into the sun after all, Vera. We’ll crash on that planet!”
He was grimly humorous.
“Radio.” Vera clutched at straws. “An SOS signal might bring rescue.”
“Or that patrol ship.” York shook his head. “But I don’t think their race is here at all. This Cepheid sun sheds an extremely variable radiation. Any planet here must have a range of temperature that shoots fro
m frigidity to super-tropical heat every twenty-two days. Evolution must have balked at trying to adjust creatures to such rapid changes.” He laughed gratingly. “And in the first place, I can’t signal an SOS. There’s a new radio principle here, too.”
He faced around haggardly.
“Only one chance, Vera. If I can get one little rocket working, we can land safely on that planet.”
While the world enlarged to a dull slate orb in the next month, York labored without sleep. He took drugs that would have killed a normal man, and phosphate foods that went directly to his brain without feeding his body. He trusted his tremendous vitality and the cosmic-fed radiogens to keep him alive.
A WEEK before the deadline, a tiny clue came to him—for the first time, the basic laws of the new universe dimly formed in his striving brain. Earth scientists, thousands upon thousands of them, had taken several centuries to piece out the natural laws of Earth’s Universe. Alone, in two years, York began to note down the first fundamental rules in a totally new and strange universe where even light-waves slowed down.
“Newton’s Third Law, the one applied to rockets, has a clause here! The higher the energy, the slower the reaction. It’s almost backward. That means a slow-burning fuel will do the trick where an explosive one won’t. Now I’m getting somewhere.”
“Hurry, Tony!”
The planet loomed now like a giant blue moon.
Hastily York constructed a wide rocket tube at the stem. Loaded with slow-burning phosphorus, it belched forth clouds of smoky vapor. It would be useless as a rocket in Earth’s Universe. But here it propelled the ship forward with amazing power.
York skilfully maneuvered the ship into a spiral course around the planet, barely in time to stop a stonelike plunge. It lowered screamingly into the atmosphere. The globular craft landed, just before consuming the last of their phosphorus supplies. York and Vera were thrown violently against the wall.
Vera crawled to her husband, weeping in mixed joy and fright.
“Tony, we’re safe! The ship held. Tony!”
Groggily he opened his eyes, stilling her alarm that he might have been killed.
“Yes, made it,” he mumbled. “New universe can’t beat us. Now let me sleep awhile—”
He slept for three days. When he awoke, he devoured the enormous quantity of hot foods Vera had held ready. York relaxed with a sigh. Then he reverted to normal after an ordeal that might have shattered the mind and health of an Earthly mortal. He relaxed only for a moment. Then he was at his instruments, testing outside conditions.
“Air unbreathable, mainly hydrocarbons. Temperature minus one hundred twenty, but rising. The Cepheid sun is building up to its maximum.”
They looked out over the alien world. It was flat, barren, blanketed with white, frozen gases. But these were dissipating slowly, swirling up into the atmosphere.
IN a week’s time all the white gas-snow was gone. The previously barren loam stirred with life. Weird, saw-edged plant life burst forth and grew amazingly, at a visible rate. As the Cepheid luminary rose to its maximum, it poured down a flood of hot blue rays. Almost abruptly the environment became tropical. Pseudo-palms and ferns reached for the sky.
“Life, after all,” marveled York. “But probably only plant forms, enjoying a brief ‘summer’ of less than two weeks before the Cepheid’s decline to ‘winter’ radiation.” He made a sudden exclamation.
“No. I’m wrong again. See those scuttling little forms among the grasses, like rabbits and weasels? Animal life! Nature is more persistent than I thought. Well, anyway, I’m almost sure rational beings could not have arisen.”
“I think you’re wrong again, Tony.” Vera smiled. “Look there, just over the horizon. I saw it before you awoke. In the telescope it looks like the top of a transparent dome. It may be a city.” She gasped suddenly, in remembrance. “Tony, suppose it’s the city of the patrol ship!”
York started, but spoke calmly.
“Suppose it isn’t. I’ll take a look at that dome. I’ve been trying for ten days to adjust our gravity engine, without result. If there are intelligent beings, and if they’re friendly, I can get the data from them. Or at least a few pointers about this crazy universe’s laws.”
Vera looked worried when he turned to leave.
“You’re unarmed, Tony, and on a strange world. Please be careful.”
“I won’t take any chances,” he promised. “We’ll keep in telepathic rapport all the time I’m away.”
Clad in his spacesuit, equipped with oxygen and temperature control, Anton York moved off into what had become a semijungle. As he suspected, the life around him was unstable. The trees were so pulpy that they fell apart at a push. A little spidery-legged creature with feathers ran against his boot. The soft blow killed it. Its body withered away on the spot. In its place, transparent grass shot up six inches in a minute and then crumbled in a gust of wind.
Swift life and swift decay was the rule here.
York plodded on. He felt like some wanderer in a ghost forest, or a jungle-man treading primeval wastes. All the science, weapons, command of natural forces that he had wielded in his own universe were nothing here. He was unarmed, helpless. In direct ratio to his distance from the ship, he grew more worried. What if that dome actually did hold the ruthless aliens who had annihilated the Three Eternals without a second’s hesitation?
FOR the first time in 2,000 years, York felt insecure. Before, visiting hundreds of worlds, he had felt himself at least the equal of any other beings.
He resolved to use extreme caution when he reached the dome.
“That’s right, Tony,” came Vera’s clear telepathic voice. She had read his thoughts. “At the slightest sign of danger, race back.” York came upon the dome suddenly. It was fringed about by rampant life blooming under the maximum rays of the Cepheid sun. He gasped. Of clear transparent material, its arc of curvature indicated that it must be at least ten miles in diameter and a thousand feet high at the peak. Only intelligence could have built the structure—first-class intelligence!
A second shock came when he looked in. He had expected a city, a mass of buildings, dwellings, busy crowds performing their daily tasks, bustling civilization, protected under the dome from the constantly changing environment outside. Such should be the logical explanation for this mighty, arcing shell.
But instead—
The scene inside was that of another world. Not a city, it was simply a stretch of rocky greenish ground, with patches of red vegetation. Here and there tall, red-needled trees, like weird pines, blocked the view. The atmosphere around was misty. The whole scene was in stark contrast to that outside the dome.
Did the Intelligent race prefer to live in such a back-to-nature setting? Why should a titanic dome, the product of super-science, enclose a queer bit of pastoral scenery? Was it a park perhaps, or some sort of a playground?
York found no answer as he trudged halfway around the dome. It was all the same inside, and apparently untenanted. That was most puzzling of all. But suddenly he saw movement. He strained his eyes through the distortions of the transparent medium.
Two furry creatures were slinking among a group of trees, within a half-mile of York’s position. He could barely make them out as apelike, walking erect on two legs. Their heads were remarkably large, denoting intelligence. Hand in hand, male and female apparently, they stumbled along. They glanced back at times, as though being stalked.
Abruptly another form lunged from behind a patch of red-berried bushes. It was a monstrous form, blubbery of body, revoltingly naked. Little stumpy legs moved it forward lumberingly. It had no claws. Its small head, bearing two saucer eyes, was perched on a long serpentine neck, giving it a periscopic view in all directions.
It looked, somehow, like a cross between a snake and walrus. It was repulsively ugly, but not formidable.
York watched as the two ape beings caught sight of the monster and ran with obvious fear. The beast lumbered after them clumsil
y. York, unconsciously loyal to the two beings more like himself, breathed in relief for them. They could easily outrun the horror.
But strangely their steps faltered. As though they had run into an invisible lake of syrup, they slowed down, their bodies straining futilely. At last the ape-man faced about, flinging the woman creature behind him. He awaited the attack of the monster.
“The ape-man will win,” York told Vera by telepathy, having transmitted the episode. “The monster, though large, has no claws, or biting jaws, or any air of strength. The ape-man should have faced it in the first place. One twist of his powerful hands on that long, thin neck and he can tear the beast’s ridiculous head off. The beast is the one who should run.”
The ape-man, as though under York’s orders, leaped forward to grasp the thin neck with his gorillalike hands. But again something clogged his efforts. His arms fell helpless. He stood rigid. He made no move to escape as the beast whipped out a rubbery tentacle, wrapped it around his neck, and choked him lifeless. Then the tentacle’s end probed into the corpse like a proboscis, and drained the dead ape-man to a bloodless husk.
CHAPTER III
Earth Under Glass
ANTON YORK tried to break his gaze from the revolting scene. He saw the woman-creature stalk forward like a robot and submit herself to the choking tentacle and draining of blood.
With a final effort, York wrenched his eyes away. In the act, he knew why it was so hard.
“Hypnosis!” he breathed. “That horrible monster fascinates his prey as a snake does a bird, and the victim is doomed.”
“But why do the builders of the dome, who must be higher life-forms than the ape-creatures, allow that to go on?” Vera’s telepathic tone was shocked, unbelieving.
“I don’t know,” returned York. “There’s some amazing mystery behind this. The dome-builders might be those same aliens of the patrol ship. I just glimpsed another dome, Vera, a few miles away. I’m going to that one and find out what I can.”