‘It’s possible he believes us destroyed,’ Erled said with a shrug. ‘Or he might already have been at the point of no return when he caught up with us and is unable to follow us any further. It could even be that the quake beam backfired on him – that happens sometimes, you know. Anyway the first thing we’ve got to do is check the ship.’
When they had done so the news was not good. The steering gear was severely damaged. Worse, the relatively delicate sustenance recycling plant had also suffered damage. Erled and Ereton debated what to do.
Erled said gloomily: ‘We may well die here in the rock. But even if we manage to turn round now and head back home, what future have we? Our rank rebellion earns the death sentence, apart from the possibility that Ergrad may have died, for which we will be held responsible. Let’s continue as best we can, Ereton.’
Dourly Ereton agreed.
In the ensuing months they spent much of their time trying to repair the damage. The recycling plant required enormous attention to keep it functioning properly. Sometimes the air became foul and the food uneatable, and neither could help but notice that even its best output was deteriorating over a period of time.
The traction motor never quite lost its ominous grating noise, but they did manage to jury-rig a steering system.
But despite all their successes the confined conditions of their existence, combined with persistent hard work, anxiety, poor food and air, were sapping their strength. As time advanced something like a stupor overcame them. Eventually each privately despaired of reaching their goal, though neither would speak of his despair to the other. During that time only one thing happened to break the monotony. Ereton was taking his turn on watch, staring with heavy-lidded eyes at the image plates. Suddenly he gave a hoarse cry which brought Erled hurrying forward.
‘Look!’
Furious ripples were appearing on the tremorscope, threatening to break out at any moment into a maelstrom of violence. ‘Definitely not a cavity,’ Erled mused. ‘To me it suggests only one thing: a natural quake – and a big one! Furthermore it’s directly ahead!’
‘A natural quake?’ said Ereton wonderingly. Theoretically they were possible but none had ever been observed. It was calculated that the violence of such phenomena, if they did actually occur, would be simply colossal – enough to wipe out in an instant any cavity luckless enough to be caught in them. Erled knew that they would not survive even for seconds in the giant rock storm that lay ahead.
‘If we’re to get out of its way we’re going to have to turn ninety degrees or more,’ Erled said. ‘Preferably to the right.’
‘Do you think we can?’
‘We’d better have a damned good try.’
Both were having a hard time to stay alert in the foul air. Cautiously they put their temporary steering system into operation. Reluctantly the ship turned a little. Then a little more. There was the sound of something snapping and an alarm sounded. Gritting his teeth, Ereton forced a little more pressure from the collapsing valves that were supposed to bring the head of the ship round in the rock. The ship turned a few degrees more, then the whole system gave way under the strain.
‘Ninety degrees,’ said Ereton, breathing deeply. ‘Just about!’
But they were without steering of any kind, and both knew that they did not have the strength to try to jury-rig the system again. Leaving the ship on automatic, they returned to their bunks.
Their morale was now falling rapidly. Whenever they could either Erled or Ereton attended to the recycling plant, but the rest of the time, completely debilitated, they simply lay on their narrow bunks and waited for whatever fate would bring.
Four months after their departure from the Cavity Erled was awakened from a deep slumber by the ringing of an alarm. He was perplexed to find that the engines were silent and that the ship was apparently motionless. Dragging himself from his bunk, he saw that the emptiness indicator was flashing – and, he guessed, had been flashing for some time.
Feverishly he shook Ereton to awareness and coaxed him to the control panel. The instruments told their own story: with no one at the controls to heed the ‘emptiness ahead’ warning, the solidity ship had plunged straight on until encountering that emptiness, upon which the automatic cutout had brought the vessel to a stop.
The two friends did not even speak to one another. Wordlessly they broke open a locker containing oxygen masks which were included in the ship’s kit in case the air of alien cavities proved unbreathable. Thus equipped, Erled summoned up his last remaining strength to force open the hull door.
The solidity ship had emerged halfway from a sheer rock wall. As luck would have it, it had struck emptiness only a couple of feet above one of the many rock ledges jutting from the cliff face. After testing the ledge for firmness, Erled and Ereton stumbled down and looked about them.
The new emptiness was faintly illumined by streaks of luminescent stone in the otherwise inert rock. These streaks occurred in the home cavity, also, and were held to be one of the prerequisites for the primeval development of life. The two men, having spent long periods inside the solidity ship in total darkness, adapted to this faint light with little difficulty. At first a terrible cosmic fear gripped Erled; for although he saw the great rock wall stretching unevenly away in all directions nearby, and below he could dimly discern floors, boulders and plateaux, ahead of him there seemed to be nothing but unending void. Was Ereton’s wild notion true? Had they come to the edge of solidity, to look out on an infinity of emptiness? But as he peered harder Erled saw that the impossible dream was not to be. He saw a dim film of something hanging, like a curtain, far away in the distance, and he knew that this was a cavity such as the one in which he had been born. Except that this cavity apparently contained no life.
‘So it’s true!’ he declaimed in a cracked voice, the words coming muffled through his mask. ‘There are other cavities in the rock! Some of them must be inhabited! Our faith is justified – we are not alone in the universe!’
At that moment his strength failed him. He felt Ereton’s aim around him, helping him back into the solidity ship, where they both lay down for the last time.
Well, Asmravaar, what do you think of that? A sad tale in some respects – but above all, I think, a triumphant victory for the spirit of intelligent life.
There is one tiny aspect of the narrative that may strike you as suspicious. I mean the part in which Erled and Ereton were turned aside from their course, and thereby enabled to find the new cavity, by the intervention of a rock quake. Did this smack of providence? Well, there, I confess, I failed to play fair and concealed the truth: – it was providence – my providence. The rock in which these creatures dwell is scattered with caverns at intervals too infrequent to hit upon by sheer luck, and the antronoscopes they use are so primitive that they are only effective over a range of two or three miles. So, seeing a suitable cavern lying quite close to their route, I could not resist helping them out a bit by causing a minor disturbance with an effector beam.
How the bipeds came to exist in their rock environment is something of a mystery. Since the surface of the planet, a thousand miles over their heads, is desolate and airless, I surmise that they might have retreated millennia ago from a natural catastrophe or, what amounts to the same thing, from a war of annihilation.
It might seem surprising that the bipeds have never guessed that they live in the interior of a spherical planet, until one remembers that there is nothing in their environment to suggest the fact. The rock stratum in which they live is a variety of basalt and is roofed over by a somewhat rare phenomenon – a five-hundred-mile thick stratum of extremely hard carbon-bonded iron and granite. It would take some really advanced expertise to penetrate this particular lithosphere and when the bipeds took refuge below it, afterwards allowing their science to deteriorate, they effectively imprisoned themselves inside their planet for ever.
The stories about the epic voyages of ancient times are literally true, by the way.
They really did journey hundreds of thousands of miles, never suspecting that they were simply travelling round the planet’s gravity radius (at that depth a circumference of roughly eighteen thousand miles) again and again.
In a way I feel glad that they never knew.
And where is my ‘philosophic victory’, you want to know? As you are too blockheaded to see it yourself, I shall have to explain. I have discovered a solid universe of infinite rock! But, you protest, the bipeds only think they live in such a universe – in actuality they dwell in a completely unremarkable, average planet, leaving aside one or two details of geological interest.
Yet, Asmravaar, are imagination and reality so very much different, really? If the mind is able to entertain some state of affairs as though it were real, then perhaps somewhere in the transfinite universe it is real.
As it happens I have a little more than just fancy to support this contention of mine. There is a puzzling little coincidence in the tale I have just related. Ereton, the theoretician, made a calculation of the hypothetical ratio of ‘emptiness’ to ‘solidity’ in his (imaginary) universe. I was astonished when I realized that the figures he produced come close to describing the actually existing converse case in the real universe – namely the average ratio of matter to empty space. I cannot help wondering, therefore, whether this is something more than a coincidence.
Some years ago there used to be much talk about the universe possessing ‘matter/anti-matter symmetry’, that is, that spatialities of our type might correspond to an equal number of spatialities where matter has its electrical charges reversed – the electron being positive and the proton negative. Since no anti-matter spatialities have been found one hears little about this idea nowadays. Well: Ereton’s calculation has led me to construct, along somewhat similar lines, a theory of my own which I shall present to the Explorers’ Club on my next return home. In my theory the universe exhibits ‘space/anti-space symmetry’, or if you like, ‘emptiness-solidity symmetry’ to use the bipeds’ terminology, so that if one passes the ‘mid-point’ of the universe, as it were (not a very accurate way to speak of transfinity, I know), then one enters a complementary series of spatialities where there is not primarily void containing islands of matter, but primarily solid matter containing occasional bubbles of void.
I’m pretty confident that my theory will make quite a splash when I announce it. It’s amusing to think how one might explore these solid spatialities. Just imagine me and my antronoscope as I bore endlessly through the rock in search of cavity-worlds!
Well, I think that’s about enough for now, as I’m very tired. I’ll burst this lot to you without delay, and then I’m going to get some much-needed sleep. Yours, and let me hear from you soon: Utz.
My poor Utz: While it was delightful to hear from you after so long, I’m afraid that your ravings about a ‘philosophic victory’ only go to show that you are suffering from hysterical boredom. Your story, let me say at once, was most entertaining, but apart from that all you have done is to blow up a simple incident into some sort of cosmic hot air which you revealingly admit to be all in your imagination. As for your theory of anti-space it is purely hypothetical and has no solid evidence to support it (the pun was unintentional). These fanciful theories never do turn out to correspond to reality anyway.
I have warned you many times about the monotony of the universe at large and now I think it’s beginning to get at you. Let me urge you to come directly home, for I think the rest will do you good. I might even find a part for you in my next play, since you obviously have a misplaced talent for the dramatic. Your ever-loving friend: Asmravaar.
Transfinite cable to Venerable Gob Slok Ok Please collect
DEAR REVERED Uncle,
I trust that the surprise and distaste you will feel on receiving this cable will be decreased when I tell you that I am sending it from the 106248th series. Since many, many infinities of solid rock and metal therefore separate us, you need not fear an attack of the disgust and revulsion which my presence seems to cause you.
I am contacting you because, whatever your feelings for me personally, you are still one of the most noted of scholars, whose professional opinion I value, and I cannot refrain from notifying you of a discovery of mine, even though I know how much you disapprove of my life as a cosmic explorer.
Having transmigrated myself into the 106248th series of solidities I proceeded to tunnel strongly through rock which proved, for an immense distance, to be unbroken. I was, I should add, in a region far removed from any of the cavity-clusters which usually abound in this series, a desolate region which would normally remain unexplored for all time. My reason for tunnelling in this direction, I say without shame (at the risk of enraging you, Uncle) was sheer caprice.
At any rate my antronoscopes registered the unexpected presence of a very large cavity so I hurried to investigate. It transpired that this cavity was the largest I have ever encountered or heard of. The mean diameter is ten million miles!
Let me repeat that, Uncle, in case you think there has been a mistake in transmission. Ten million miles! Not only that but the cavity contains a rich biological life and has several intelligent species scattered around its circumference, none of which I have made contact with yet, as I want to await your advice.
The fact is, Uncle, that so far I have investigated only one of these species and it entertains such an astonishing picture of the cosmos that I don’t know quite how to proceed. Let me explain. In a cavity of this size centrifugal gravity works very efficiently. Consequently there is a film of atmosphere about two hundred miles deep upon the walls of the cavity, but the rest is void – pure emptiness.
I should also add that it is almost impossible to see as far as the opposite side of the cavity, for reasons rather too complicated to go into here. Anyway, the upshot is that these intelligent beings, who live, of course, within the atmosphere, are aware that a vacuum lies above them after the atmosphere peters out (being compressed, of course, by the excessive gravity). But their world is so large, and so impossible for them to explore fully on account of its size, that they possess no idea that it constitutes the inner surface of a sphere! (Or near-sphere.) They suppose that the void above them extends without limit – that the cosmos is an infinity of vacuum with only islands of solid matter in it.
It was some time before I was able to comprehend a belief so bizarre and inconceivable. And yet now that I have managed, after a fashion, to grasp it, I find the idea rather compelling and fascinating, and I can’t help wondering whether there might, among all the solidities as yet unexplored, be one consisting of almost nothing but emptiness?
I hope, Uncle, that you can forget our differences for long enough to give your attention to this question. We are both, remember, animated by a love of knowledge and I would listen to your opinion most earnestly. Do you think that a nearly-empty solidity – one would, I suppose, have to call it a ‘spatiality’ – is possible?
And apart from that, should I attempt to contact the beings in the giant cavity, or should I leave them alone with their delusion?
Your perplexed and respectful nephew,
Awm.
Transfinite Open Cable Receipt Awm Oosh Ok Transmit 1062-- range Reply not prepaid
DEAR Nephew,
Not only is your idea of a vacuous infinity inconceivable, it is also downright silly and utterly impossible, as well you know.
In a way it’s a pity we don’t live in such a world because no type of propulsion could operate in a void, since there would be nothing on which to gain traction, and that would at least prevent you young grubs from gadding about the cosmos with all the irresponsibility of flame-flies.
I have placed on record your discovery of the curiosity, namely the giant cavity, and I suppose I should thank you for that trifle. However I feel it is amply repaid by my deigning to reply at all to your cable, which otherwise I would have ignored.
If you solicit my opinion then you must accept it on any subje
ct I care to name. Let me be quite specific: your larvae, of which you seem to generate an indecent number with each visit to your long-suffering family, are hatching without the benefit of a father to guide them in the rituals of the swarm, and seem most unlikely to grow into decent, low-crawling worms. Your wives grow fat and lazy without the discipline which only a strict husband can provide, and the affairs of your estates are going to rack and ruin. I thank God that your father is not alive to see how his son has turned out.
A worm’s place is at home – that is my opinion, and I strongly recommend that you repair hither post-haste. As for whether you should or should not communicate with ignorant savages, that is of absolutely no interest to me.
Your most displeased uncle,
Gob.
ALL THE KING’S MEN
I saw Sorn’s bier, an electrically driven train decorated like a fanfare, as it left the North Sea Bridge and passed over the green meadows of Yorkshire. Painted along its flank was the name HOLATH HOLAN SORN, and it motored swiftly with brave authority. From where we stood in the observation-room of the King’s Summer Palace, we could hear the hollow humming of its passage.
‘You will not find things easy without Holath Holan Sorn,’ I said, and turned. The King of All Britain was directing his mosaic eyes towards the train.
‘Things were never easy,’ he replied. But he knew as well as I that the loss of Sorn might mean the loss of a kingdom.
The King turned from the window, his purple cloak flowing about his seven-foot frame. I felt sorry for him: how would he rule an alien race, with its alien psychology, now that Sorn was dead? He had come to depend entirely upon that man who could translate one set of references into another as easily as he crossed the street. No doubt there were other men with perhaps half of Sorn’s abilities, but who else could gain the King’s trust? Among all humans, none but Sorn could be the delegate of the Invader King.
Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis Page 35