The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  Caroline straightened from the bank of instruments mounted upon the roof outside the laboratory.

  “It’s building up fast,” she said. “I’m almost afraid. It might get out of control, you know. But we have to have enough of it. If the first stroke doesn’t utterly destroy the Hellhounds, we won’t have a second chance.”

  Gary’s mind ran over the hectic days of work, the mad scramble against time. How Kingsley and Tommy had gone out to the edge of the universe to create a huge bubble of space-time, warping the rim of space into a hump, curving the time-space continuum into a hypersphere that finally closed and divorced itself from the parent body, pinching off like a yeast bud, an independent universe in the inter-space.

  It had taken power to do that, a surging channel of energy that poured out of the power transmitter, crossing space in a tight beam to be at hand for the making of a new universe. But it had taken more power to “skin” a hypersphere, to turn it through a theoretical fifth dimension until it was of the stuff that the inter-space was made of—a place where time did not exist, a place whose laws were not the laws of the universe, a mystery region that was astonishingly easy to maneuver through space once it was treated. It wasn’t a sphere or a hypersphere—it was a strange dimension that apparently did not lend itself to measurement, or definition, or to identification by any of the normal perception senses.

  But whatever it was, it hung there above the city, although there was no clue to its existence. It couldn’t be seen or sensed, just something created from equations supplied by a last man living on a dying planet, equations scribbled on the back of an old envelope. An envelope, Gary remembered, that had contained an irate letter from a creditor who felt he should have a little cash on account. “Too long overdue,” the letter said. He grinned. Back on Earth the creditor undoubtedly still was sending letters to him—pointing out that the account was becoming longer overdue with the passing of each month.

  Outside the universe that tiny, created hypersphere was bumping along, creating frictional stress, creating a condition for the creation of the mysterious energy of eternity—an energy that even now was pouring into the universe and being absorbed by the fifth-dimensional frame that poised about the city.

  A new, raw energy from a region that had no time—an energy that was at once formless and timeless, but an energy that was capable of being crystallized into any form.

  Kingsley was standing beside Gary, his great head bent back, staring upward. “An energy field,” he said, “and what energy! Like a battery, storing up the energy from inter-space. I hope it does what Caroline thinks it will.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Gary. “If she says it will do a thing, it will. You saw the mathematics she brought hack.”

  “Sure, I saw the mathematics,” Kingsley said, “but I couldn’t understand them.”

  He shook his head inside the helmet.

  “What’s the universe coming to?” he asked.

  Caroline spoke quietly to the Engineer.

  “I think there’s plenty of energy now,” she said. “You had better call them down.”

  The Engineer, headphones clamped upon his head, apparently was giving orders to the Engineer fleet, but the Earthlings couldn’t catch his thoughts.

  “Watch now,” chirped Herb. “This is going to be a sight worth watching.”

  HIGH ABOVE the city a ship dropped, flashing downward, like a silver bullet. Another dropped and still another until the entire Engineer fleet was retreating, flashing back toward the ruined city, and in their wake followed the triumphant Hellhounds, a victorious pack in full cry, determined to wipe out the last trace of a hated civilization.

  The Engineer had snatched the headphones from his head, was racing to the set of controls. Gary, glancing away from the battle scene above, saw his metal fingers reach out and manipulate dials, saw Caroline pick up an ordinary flashlight.

  He knew that the Engineer was shifting the fifth-dimensional mass into a position between them and the screaming fleet of death above them—shifting that field of terrible energy—the energy that was entirely formless, an energy without a time factor, an energy whose power would be almost infinite.

  The last of the Engineer fleet had reached the city, was shrieking down between the shattered towers, as if fleeing for its very life.

  And only a few miles away, in what amounted to a mass formation, the Hellhound fleet was plunging down, guns silent now, protective screens still up, grim and ghastly ships running their quarry to the ground.

  Gary’s body tensed as he saw Caroline’s arm sweep up, clutching the tiny flashlight, pointing it at the on-driving fleet.

  He saw the flash of light burn upward, pale in the light of the sinking suns—a tiny, feeble ineffective beam of light stabbing at the oncoming ships.

  And then the heavens seemed to blaze with light and a streamer of blue-white intensity whipped out toward the ships. Protective screens flared briefly and then exploded into a million flashing sparks. For the space of one split second, before he could get his hand up to shield his eyes against the inferno in the sky, Gary saw the gaunt black skeletons of the Hellhound ships, writhing and disappearing in the surging blast of energy that tore at them and twisted them and finally utterly destroyed them.

  The sky was empty, as empty as if there had never been a Hellhound ship. There was no sign of the fifth-dimensional mass, no hint of ship or gun—just the blue of the sky, ashing into violet as the three suns swung below the far-off horizon.

  “Well,” said Herb, and Gary could hear his breath sobbing with excitement, “that’s the end of the Hellhounds.”

  Yes, that was the end of the Hellhounds, thought Gary. There was nothing in the universe that could stand before such a blast of energy. When the light, the tiny feeble beam from the ridiculous little flash had struck the energy field, the energy, that timeless, formless stuff, had suddenly crystallized, had taken on the form of energy it had encountered. And in a burst of light it had struck at the Hellhounds, struck with terrible effectiveness—with entire lack of mercy, had wiped them out in the winking of an eye.

  He tried to imagine that blast of light moving out into the universe. It would travel for years, would wing its merciless way for many thousands of light-years. In time its energy might wane, would slowly dissipate, would lose some of its power in the vast spaces of intergalactic space. And perhaps the day would come when all its energy would be gone. But meanwhile nothing could stand in its way, nothing could resist it. In years to come great suns would explode into invisible gas as the frightful power of the beam reached them and annihilated them and then passed on. And some astronomer, catching the phenomena in his lens, would speculate upon just what had happened.

  He turned slowly around and faced Caroline. “How does it feel,” he asked, “to win a war?”

  The face she turned to him was strained and worn. “Don’t say that to me,” she said. “I had to do it. I didn’t want to. They were a terrible race, but they were alive—and there is so little life in the universe.”

  “Poor kid,” he said, “you’re all worn out. You’ve been working too hard. No sleep. You should rest up a bit.”

  He saw the tragic lines of her mouth.

  “There is no rest,” she said. “No rest at all. We have just started. We have to save the universe. We have to create more and more of the fifthdimensional frameworks, many of them and larger. To absorb the energy when the universes meet.”

  Gary started. He had forgotten the approaching universe. So absorbed had they all become in ending the Hellhound attack that the edge of the real and greater danger had been dulled.

  But now, brought back to it, he realized the job they faced.

  HE SPUN on the Engineer. “How much longer?” he asked. “How much longer have we?”

  “Very little time,” said the Engineer. “Very little. I fear that energy may flood in upon us at any time.”

  “That energy,” said Kinsley, a fanatical flame in his eyes. “Th
ink of what could be done with it. We could set up a huge framework of fifth-dimensional space, use it as an absorber, a battery. We could send energy almost anywhere throughout the universe. A central universal power plant.”

  “First,” declared Tommy, “you’d have to control it, be able to direct it in a tight beam.”

  “First,” insisted Caroline, “we have to do something about this other universe.”

  “Wait a second,” said Gary. “We’ve forgotten something. We asked those people in the other universe to come over and help us, but we don’t need them now.”

  He looked at the Engineer. “Have you heard from them?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the Engineer. “I have heard from them. They still want to come.”

  “They still want to come?” Astonishment rang in Gary’s voice. “Why should they want to come?”

  “They want to emigrate to our universe,” said the Engineer. “And I have agreed to allow them to do so.”

  “You have agreed?” rumbled Kingsley. “And since when has this universe been in the market for immigrants? We don’t know what kind of people they are. They might be dangerous. They may want to destroy the present life within the universe.”

  “There is plenty of room for them,” said the Engineer, and if possible, his voice seemed cold and more impersonal than ever. “There is room to spare. We have over fifty billion galaxies and over fifty billion stars in each galaxy. Only one out of every ten thousand of these stars has a solar system, and only one of each hundred of the solar systems has life. And if we need more solar systems we can manufacture them. With the power at our command, the power of the eternal dimension, we can move stars, we can hurl them together and make solar systems. With this power we can reshape the universe, mold it to our needs.”

  The idea impacted with stunning force on Gary’s brain. They could reshape the universe! Working with the raw materials at hand, with the almost infinite power at their command, they could alter the course of stars, could realign the galaxies, could manufacture planets, set up a well-worked-out plan to offset entropy, the tendency to run down, the tendency to go amuck. His mind groped futilely at the ideas, pawing them over and over, but back of it all was a curtain of wonderment and awe. And through his brain sang a subtle warning—a persistent little warning that hammered at his thoughts. Mankind itself wasn’t ready for such power, couldn’t use it intelligently, perhaps would destroy the universe with it. Was there any other entity in the universe qualified to use it? Would it be wise to place such power in the hands of any entity?

  “But why,” Caroline was asking, “do they want to come?”

  “Because,” said the Engineer, “we are going to destroy their universe to save ours.”

  IT WAS as if a bombshell had been dropped among them. Silence clapped down. Gary felt Caroline’s hand creep into his. He held it tight. He heard the gasp from Herb, saw Kingsley’s great hamlike hands closing and opening.

  “But why destroy their universe?” shouted Tommy. “We have the means at hand to save them both. All we have to do is create more of these five-dimensional screens to absorb the energy.”

  “No,” said the Engineer, “we could not do it. Given time we could. But there is so little time, so very, very little time. We never would be able to create enough of the screens. The energy would overwhelm us. It would take so many of them. And we have so little time.”

  His thought cut off and Gary heard the shuffle of Kingsley’s feet.

  “These other beings,” the Engineer went on, “know that their universe has very little longer to exist in any event. It has almost reached the end of its time. It soon will die the heat death. Throughout its space, matter and energy are being swiftly distributed. Soon the day will arrive when it will be equally distributed, when the temperature, the energy, the mass throughout the universe will be spread so thin that it hardly exists.”

  Gary sucked in his breath. “Like a watch running down,” he said.

  “You’re right,” said Kingsley. “Like a watch that has run down. That is what will happen to this universe in time.”

  “Not,” said Gary, “if we have the energy from inter-space at our command.”

  “Already,” said the Engineer, “only one comer of this other universe is suitable for life. The area facing us. Into that area all life has been driven and now it has been, or is being, assembled to transfer to our universe.”

  “But,” said Herb, “just how are they going to get here?”

  “They will use a time warp,” said the Engineer. “They will bud out from their universe, but in doing so they will distort the time factor in the walls of their hypersphere. A distortion that will send them ahead in time, will push their little universe closer to us than to their universe. Our gravity will grasp the hypersphere and draw it in.”

  “But that,” said Gary, “will produce more energy. Their little universe will be destroyed.”

  “No,” declared the Engineer, “because they will merge their time-space continuum with the continuum of our universe as soon as the two come together. They will immediately become a part of our universe.”

  “Clever,” said Tommy, “clever as hell.”

  “You told them how to create a hypersphere?” asked Herb.

  “I did,” said the Engineer. “And it will save the people of that other universe. They had tried many things, had worked out theories and mathematics in an effort to escape. They discovered many things that we do not know, but they had never thought of budding out from their universe. They apparently are a mechanistic people, a people very much like the Engineers. They seem to have lost that vital imagination with which your people are so well supplied.”

  “My Lord,” breathed Gary, “think of it! Imagination saving the people of another universe. The imagination of a little third-rate race that hasn’t even started using its imagination yet.”

  “You are right,” declared the Engineer, “and in the aeons to come that imagination will make your race the masters of the entire universe.”

  “Prophecy,” said Gary.

  “I know,” said the Engineer.

  “There’s just one thing,” said Herb, speaking slowly, “and that is, how is that other universe going to be destroyed?”

  “We,” said the Engineer, “are going to destroy it in exactly the same way we destroyed the Hellhounds!”

  XIV.

  TOMMY SAT in the pilot’s seat and urged the ship slowly forward, using rocket blast after rocket blast to keep it on its course.

  “You have to fight to stand still here,” he gritted between his teeth. “A man can’t tell just where he is. There doesn’t seem to be any direction, nothing to orient oneself.”

  “Of course not,” rumbled Kingsley. “We’re in a sort of place that no other man has ever been. We’re right out in the area-where space and time are breaking down, where lines of force are all distorted, where everything is jumbled and broken up.”

  “The edge of the universe,” said Caroline.

  Gary stared out through the vision panel. There was nothing to see, nothing but a blue void that queerly seemed alive with a deep intensity of life.

  He turned from the panel and asked the Engineer: “Any sign of energy yet?”

  “Faint signs,” said the Engineer, bending lower to peer at a dial set in a detector instrument. “Such very faint signs. The other universe is almost upon us now and the lines of force are beginning to make themselves felt.”

  “How much longer will it be?” asked Kingsley.

  “I cannot tell,” the Engineer told him. “We know so little about the laws out here. It may be a very short while or it may be some time yet.”

  “Well,” said Herb, “the fireworks can start any time now. The folks from the other universe have crossed safely and there’s no reason for the other universe existing. We can blast it any time we want to.”

  “Gary,” said Kingsley, “you and Herb better get over to those guns. We may want action fast.”<
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  Gary nodded and walked to the controls of a disintegrator gun. He slid into the seat back of the controls and readied out a hand to grasp the swivel butt. He swung it back and forth, knew that outside the ship the grim muzzle of the weapon was swinging in a wide arc.

  Through the tiny port in front of him he could see the blue intensity of the void in which they moved.

  Out here time and space were thinning down and breaking up. Like a boat riding on the surface of a heaving sea, they were riding the very rim of the universe, their ship being tossed about by the shifting, twisting coordinates of force.

  Out there somewhere, very close, was the mysterious inter-space. Close, too, invisible in all its immensity, but looming ever closer, was another universe. An old and tottering universe, from which its inhabitants had fled, a dying universe that had been sentenced to death so that a younger universe might live.

  IN JUST a few minutes now the space between the universes would begin to fill with a charge of that terrible, timeless, formless energy. Slowly it would begin seeping into the two universes, slowly at first and then faster and faster, increasing their mass, dooming them to almost instant destruction.

  But before that could happen the disintegrator ray, most terrible form of energy known to the Engineers, would blast out into that field of latent energy, would sweep outward toward that other approaching universe.

  Instantly the field of energy would be turned into the terrific power of the disintegrator ray, but millions of times more powerful than the ray itself. A blinding sheet of savage energy that would stop at nothing, that would smash the very mold of space and time, would destroy matter and cancel other energy, would blast its way into the other universe.

  And when that happened, the energy field, draining all of its energy into the disintegrator blast, would be diverted from the younger universe, would turn its full force upon the one to be destroyed.

  Staggering under the onrush of such a fierce storm of energy, the old universe would start contracting. Its mass would build up, faster and faster, as the fifth-dimensional energy, riding on the beams of the disintegrator guns, itself turning into an energy a million times more terrible than the disintegrator ray, hurled itself into its space-time frame.