by Earl
[2] (Einstein’s famous formula, stating that nothing could go faster than light, meant nothing now. It applied only to a uniform light-speed. His postulate that it would take infinite energy to move an infinite mass at the speed of light was a myth. In reality, according to Templeton’s figures, there was no limit to speed anywhere in the cosmos.)
[3] Note—As determined by Sir James Jeans in his book “Through Space and Time”.
[4] (Excerpt from Templeton’s log. “We saw a great Cepheid star that was diamond-bright up ahead, but when it receded to the rear, had faded to a lusterless yellow, obeying some mysterious pulse-beat of its enigmatic interior. A ring nebula, one of the so-named ‘planetary’ ones, was a magnificent sight later, its tiny central sun surrounded by a glorious halo of shimmering, greenish gossamer. Almost every type of star has been appearing in the forward sectors of the firmament and racing to the rear of us. Red giants whose comparatively cool surface was no hotter than an electric furnace, but whose outer circumference would have engulfed the Solar System way out to Mars. Medium stars, blue and hot, whose radiation, from Earth’s distance, would have withered all life in a short minute. Smaller stars, yellow and delicately haloed with pink streamers, comparable to Sol. Red dwarfs, no larger than Jupiter, but extremely dense. And finally, white dwarfs, not much larger than Earth itself, with a surface temperature of 50,000 degrees, and so dense that one thimbleful by man’s measurement would weigh a ton.”)
[5] There are many such globular clusters within the Milky Way Galaxy, each with fifty to a hundred thousand stars within a space of forty light-years. By Templeton’s new measure, within sue light-year of each other. But he was right, that it was nothing to worry about. Those apparently crowded suns were still far more widely spaced than the molecules in Earth’s best vacuum! The skip was like a grain of sand speeding through a hollow globe tile size of Earth, filled with a hundred thousand evenly spaced peas.)
[6] (Templeton is again right. Einstein’s relativity, a part of his grand illusory scheme to account for a uniform light-speed, had also passed by the board. Time passing for them was time passing for Earth. The universe, by Templeton’s theory, was a much simpler place than Earth’s philosopher-scientists had pictured it. There were straight lines, and absolute seconds, and ordered dimensions. Mankind had made something complex out of something as unalterable and simple as two plus two.)
[7] (Some Earth minds, strangely enough, had dimly theorized along this line. It was the “accordion-universe” theory of Tolman and Hubble of Mt. Wilson, those two who had first catalogued the recession of the nebulae from a common center. Their basic postulate had been that the final heat-death of the super-universe would eventually cause a collapse of all the galaxies into a reverse state. But one man on Earth had come even closer to the truth—the philosopher-priest LeMaitre and his endless, pulsating superatom universe. For he had pictured almost exactly the supercycle of successive entropies and rebirths that Templeton and Moore now witnessed.)
ARTIFICIAL UNIVERSE
Two inquisitive physics professors dare to tamper with the very forces of existence—until tragedy strikes like the hand of an angry god crying, “Stay within your barriers!”
AN invisible beam of transverse, polarized waves—never before known to man—rolled from the octagonal cathode of the tube. Six feet away the target plate of copper, coated with colloidal selenium, became surrounded with a ghostly phosphorescence, as the superlightning forces impinged on it. The cathode grew brighter and an inverted image of it appeared on the target plate.
Then suddenly, the target vanished! And with it most of the three-foot length of the wooden pedestal on which it had reposed.
The two men stared at one another in bewilderment.
“Prob-probably vaporized,” stammered Peter Grant, though he knew that could not be. He was unwilling to admit that it had looked like nothing more than a snuffing out. As though the target and pedestal had been flicked into another dimension.
But Professor James Arkwright ran from behind the asbestos shield with a queerly hopeful look on his face. His actions were peculiar. He cautiously approached the low stump of the pedestal with one arm outstretched like a sleepwalker. Then abruptly he stopped and began feeling around the pedestal as though demented.
“What under the sun—” began Peter Grant, then gasped. For the professor’s hands were describing the outlines of a perfect sphere!
“Solid as a rock!” proclaimed the scientist jubilantly. “Here—you try it!” He took his assistant’s hand and pressed it against the same invisible surface he had explored.
Grant drew his hand back as though he had been stung, startled at having felt a hard, smooth object as invisible as the air around him. Then, ashamed of his action, he stretched his fingers out again and slowly traced part of the large sphere enclosed by the unseeable surface.
“It’s—weird!” he muttered shudderingly. “Something solid and invisible made out of nothing!” And from that moment on, Peter Grant instinctively feared and hated the globe.
“It roughly centers around the spot where the target plate was,” the scientist was saying. He felt toward the bottom of it. “And it rests on the stump of the pedestal, which looks as though it was sheered off as cleanly and easily as a buzz-saw would cut cheese.”
“But where are the target plate and the rest of the pedestal?”
“Inside,” returned the professor shortly.
“Why don’t we see them then? We see the air inside of it.”
The elderly scientist shook his head. “No, we don’t. Grant, this is a phenomenon of phenomena. We see nothing of what is in the sphere. We are seeing around it. That is, the light rays striking it simply flow around it like the streamlines around a curved surface, and reconverge at their proper angle 180 degrees away.”
“But light rays don’t do that sort of thing, Arkwright!”
“Not ordinarily. But they do when they meet up with something that will neither absorb, reflect, or transmit them. Don’t you realize what we have here, man?”
The scientist’s eyes glowed like hot coals. “This is vibration-stasis one hundred per cent. A globe or shell of space in which all vibration completely cancels. A laboratory universe!”
NOW that they had it, Grant could hardly believe it, though they had labored for five years to see this result. Theory had blossomed directly into experimental fact. Their formulae had shown that transverse, polarized waves, striking a sensitized selenium surface, would create a surrounding shell of vibrationlessness. A thin shell, but inconceivably impenetrable.
Grant touched it again, marveling. Then he rapped his knuckles on it smartly. The only sound he heard was that of flesh being bruised. He raised his fist, to give more powerful blows, but stopped. He turned and clutched the scientist’s arm.
“Arkwright, it’s impossible! If the shell is impervious to radiation, how can the rays of the tube reach the target? The shell must instantly dissolve when its power source is cut off.”
“It is cut off, Grant, many times a second. But each time the shell forms and cuts off the tube rays, the shell automatically vanishes again. The tube rays again strike the target and again the shell forms, etc., millions of times a second. To our slow senses, the shell is continuous in duration.” He looked around. “Now let’s make some real tests.”
He picked up a heavy steel bar, poised it over his head and brought it down on the invisible surface forcefully. The bar halted abruptly and made no more sound than if it had hit a wet rag in mid-air. The professor tried twice more, wielding the iron club with sufficient strength to have demolished anything else in the room. The floorboards beneath the pedestal creaked in protest, showing that the full force of his blows was transferred to them.
“In the last analysis,” said the professor, wiping his forehead, “matter is vibratory. Nothing vibratory can pass that shell of vibration-stasis. And everything in our known universe is vibratory.”
“Therefore nothing ca
n pass it?” The scientist strode suddenly to his desk and came back holding an automatic pistol gingerly at arm’s length. “Here,” he handed it to Grant, “I’ve always been afraid of these things. I don’t really know why I keep it around. You fire at the globe.” Grant stared at the ugly object in his hand. “This may be dangerous,” he protested, “if the bullet ricochets. Besides, people may hear the noise and send police.”
“Nonsense!” snorted the scientist. “People around here have heard so many explosive noises from this laboratory that they wouldn’t turn their heads if we dropped a cup of nitro-glycerine on the floor. The bullets are not steel-jacketed, so they won’t ricochet except at extreme angles. However, we’ll take protection behind the asbestos shield.”
They stationed themselves behind the tall shield and Grant peered around the edge with one eye. Though unfamiliar with weapons himself, he took a firm grip of the cold, hard stock and aimed for the center of the globe, as nearly as he could judge. He pressed the trigger.
The roar of the gun seemed like the collapse of the building about their ears. Five bullets spat forth before Grant realized he must ease back on the trigger. He looked at the weapon shudderingly. How easy it was to kill!
Professor Arkwright ran from behind the shield like a scurrying rabbit. His triumphant shout burst out as he pointed to the floor just beside the pedestal stump which held the transparent ball. Three wide, flattened disks of hot, smoking lead lay there, where they had fallen after smashing against the globe. The other two bullets had evidently struck at a sharp angle and deflected somewhere.
“Do you see?” cried the professor, slapping the globe almost affectionately. “This is the ultimate in the way of barriers. The inside of it must be a strange world indeed—lightless, heatless, soundless, completely isolated from the rest of the universe. A space that knows nothing of the normal laws. A different universe!”
“I—I confess I don’t really understand it!” Grant shook his head slowly. “Something made out of nothing that stops bullets! Why wasn’t it knocked off the pedestal? It must be light as a bubble, yet stands there like a rock.”
“Inertia is one of the normal laws,” answered the elderly scientist. “But it obeys no normal laws. Any pressure applied to it on the outside is not transmitted to its interior, therefore it does not move.”
“I’d like to try a cannon-ball on it,” growled Grant.
“And yet it is as light as a feather, or lighter, for it weighs nothing. You know, it is something like thought. Thought is intangible, weighs nothing, yet exists in some unnameable way.”
“But thought won’t stop bullets.”
“Has anyone ever deliberately built a wall of thought?” demanded the professor sharply. “Grant, there are things in the future of science—”
HE moved toward the control switch of the rumbling cyclotron that powered his tube. “At any rate, we’ve stumbled on something here as significant to science as Faraday’s first electromagnetic field, or Madame Curie’s first discovery of natural transmutation in radium. Faraday utilized the interior of his field to produce electricity. Rutherford and others used radium rays to explore subatomic fields. This field of ours, this waveless stasis—”
He jerked the switch of the great machine that supplied power. The cathode of the tube dimmed and its strange emanation ceased. They watched the space where the selenium target had been. Slowly something appeared there. A phosphorescent haziness solidified and became the target plate resting on the flat top of the wooden pedestal. The glow vanished suddenly and everything was normal.
Grant reached out a hand, half expecting to feel that weird barrier again, but nothing was there. He touched the target plate gingerly; it was cold, strangely. But the touch had been enough to upset the sheared pedestal and its top part tumbled off, separating exactly where the shell of stasis had gone through. The cut was clean and smooth, like that of a sharp axe.
“No harm done to the matter within the shell,” remarked Professor Arkwright irrelevantly. “Grant,” he said, “what do you suppose a person would find inside that shell?”
“Why, nothing of course. No light, sound, heat or anything from the. outside world. It would be like a tomb. No outside stimuli would come through—nothing.”
“Nothing, you say,” mused Professor Arkwright. “Nothing normal—that would be more correct. We might conjecture for hours regarding the interior of the shell without arriving at any conclusions. It stands to reason we can’t explore that region with instruments from the outside, so we’ll put some inside and form the shell around it. We’ll use one of our high stools for a stand.”
A few minutes later they had set the target plate on the high stool. Beside it reposed a thermometer, a barometer, an electroscope, a tuning fork with a recording attachment, and lastly a photographic plate protected by a red celluloid shield.
The cyclotron was again turned on and again they saw the breathtaking vanishment of everything within the charmed area. They carried out their tests one by one.
First, the twin of the tuning fork inside was rapped smartly a dozen times with a steel hammer. Its pure bell-like tone buffeted the invisible sphere for long minutes.
Secondly, an ordinary electric heater was brought close and turned full upon the globe for ten minutes. On the other side of the globe, out of direct range of the infra-red beams, the professor experimentally held a candle. As though there existed no barrier between, the wax softened. The candle bent ungracefully and finally became a shapeless mass that dripped melted wax to the floor.
Arkwright smiled significantly at his assistant, then motioned for the portable x-ray tube to be wheeled up. Its powerful beam was thrown against the globe. A fluoroscope screen placed beyond the globe flared up with ghostly luminance.
Finally, a mercury-arc lamp was turned on stutteringly, and its intense light trained on the space that looked as though it were absolutely empty. The end of the beam, without loss of focus, limelighted the wall beyond with its purplish-white glare.
“Perfect!” exclaimed Arkwright, running to the switch and stopping the cyclotron.
They watched and saw again the curiously delayed reappearance of matter within the adamant shell of stasis. When the instruments had become solidly real, the two men examined them eagerly. The candle-black of the tuning fork’s recording attachment lay unmarked. “No sound waves pierced the shell,” summarized Arkwright. “The two tuning forks thetic vibration will easily work within ten feet—ordinarily.”
The two thin gold leaves of the electroscope hung complacently side by side. “The x-rays did not produce one single ion within the shell!”
The thermometer’s reading had not changed one fraction of a degree. “The infra-red rays of the heater did not penetrate at all. They simply flowed around, as light rays do, converged on the other side and there melted the candle.”
The photographic plate, when developed rapidly, was clear. “The ultra-violet rays of the mercury-arc didn’t get in a peep.”
“But shouldn’t they?” queried Grant. “If the shell is broken and reformed many times a second, why didn’t the rays of light, heat and the x-rays work through during the turned-of phases of the cycle? No matter how rapid the cycle is, electro-magnetic beams at a speed of 186,000 miles a second must plunge through!”
Arkwright held up a scornful finger. “Grant, you forget. Electromagnetic beams are discontinuous themselves. Planck’s quantum formulae show that. When you cut a quantum in half, you don’t get half a quantum. You get nothing! The cycle of this shell is rapid enough to chop all quanta in fractions and therefore cancel them.”
HIS voice rose in triumph. It was quite natural under the circumstances, though Grant had to smile. “Nothing passes that shell of vibration-stasis!”
“I guess you’re right,” confessed Grant.
“Nothing; except perhaps—”
“What?” asked Grant as the scientist paused. Then his eyes riveted on the fifth instrument that had been within th
e shell. “By the way, Arkwright, what was the idea of the barometer?”
The professor started slightly out of a thoughtful study. “You will notice,” he said quietly, “that its reading did not change in the slightest.”
“Which means the air-pressure within the shell did not change. But—”
“Which means,” interposed the elderly scientist, “that within the shell exists a space containing breathable air.”
Grant gasped. “You mean—”
“I mean I’m going to spend a few minutes within that shell! I’m going to be the first man to exist in a different universe, completely and totally cut off from our universe! There will be no sound, no light, no heat, no rays, no indication from the outside world that it exists. That, Grant, will be a magnificent experience!”
“I think it’s plain crazy!” protested Grant vehemently. “And I think you’re utterly mad to even entertain the idea. We don’t know what would happen—there might be instant death waiting within that unknown globe!”
“Drivel!” scoffed the professor, undeterred. “Particularly, I want to try some telepathy experiments between ourselves, separated by the stasis-shell. After I’m in, you’ll take a pack of ESP cards and run off the first ten. I’ll be recipient and try to catch your calls, memorizing them to check later. We’ve always been a good telepathy team, with me as recipient, so if the shell does not interfere, we should get results.”
Grant was twisting his hands together nervously. “Arkwright, for the last time, give up the idea. It’s positively insane—”
“Grant, a scientist is not supposed to work on hunches. But I have a hunch now and I’m going to play it for all it’s worth.”