Dynasty of the Small

by John Russell Fearn

  Nal nodded, reminded of events of two generations ago, six hundred years. At that time the entire race had fled through the void from the fourth planet nearest the sun. Gigantic geological changes and the consequent evaporation of their normal air and oceans had driven them out to this safer world.

  Now they could look upon the planet they had left and see the merciless corrosion of ferric oxide going on before their eyes. But here they were safe, established. In this one city, the only city so far on Earth, the third world, was encompassed the entire nucleus of the mighty race—twenty thousand of them.

  “We have to expand, colonize, marry, intermarry—spread ourselves all over the world,” Nal murmured, repeating the words of Brada, their monarch. “That is right and as it should be. We are not upsetting anybody who normally belongs to this planet. Except for us it has no intelligent life.”

  The twilight deepened. The girl moved slightly.

  “Are we going home, Nal, or do you intend to spend more time in the laboratory?”

  He seemed to make up his mind about something before he replied.

  “Mydia, we share most of our joys and sorrows, don’t we?” he asked.

  “All of them,” she answered, her eyes luminous.

  “Then I’m going to show you what I’m up to,” he decided. “Be hanged to rules and regulations! They can’t say anything to me, anyway. I’m too important a research scientist for that. Come below and see for yourself.”

  He caught her arm and she followed promptly across the roof and down the emergency staircase into the silent corridor, which led to the department in which he had been working. Normally the staff in the building had ceased work by this time. Only special research, such as Nal had been engaged upon, made it necessary to delay beyond that hour.

  “We’re quite alone,” he said, as he ushered her into the gigantic hall-like room. “Come along.”

  He closed the door behind her and in wonderment she gazed about her upon the towering giants of instruments. Though she was accustomed to scientific equipment in her daily work as a machine-minder she had never before encountered such apparatus as here. Most of it was for research work, or the product thereof, and therefore not in general use but reserved exclusively for secret experiments.

  Finally Nal stopped beside the bench at which he had been working. He gestured briefly to the metal foils with the mathematics thereon and waved to what seemed to be a highly polished ball standing on the summit of a glittering rod, its base firmly bolted to the metal flooring.

  “That,” he said, “is the product of these figures.”

  Mydia contemplated the object for a moment or two and then she looked vaguely disappointed.

  “Not very—impressive, is it?”

  Nal smiled. “It isn’t meant to be. In fact, the fewer gadgets there are around it, better. It connects to the switchboard here,” he nodded to it, “and this blue push-button controls it. The button is the power-feeder. The thing, itself is a converter globe, made to react directly on the etheric waves of matter.”

  “How?” Mydia questioned, puzzled.

  “Well, it—” Nal broke off in surprise as the visiphone buzzed suddenly. Puzzled, he pressed the switch that opened the audiophone. Simultaneously, a face remarkable for its massive strength and mature wisdom appeared on the screen.

  “Oh, there you are, Nal.” The deep, genial voice of Grifa, the First Physicist of Atlantis, came over the speakers. “I’d like you to come to my apartment for a few words. About your demonstration tomorrow.”

  “Er—yes, sir.” Nal moved his hand behind his back so Mydia would understand to keep out of range of the instrument’s visual pickup. “I’ll be glad to, sir. Right away?”

  “Yes. I won’t keep you long.”

  Nal switched off and glanced ruefully at the girl. She breathed an expressive sigh of relief.

  “Good job the old boy decided to phone instead of coming here personally,” she said.

  “I’ll have to go.” Nal looked momentarily annoyed. “But I don’t expect I’ll be long. Then I’ll come back and finish what I was going to tell you. You don’t mind waiting?”

  “Of course not. Even looking at this place passes the time.”

  Folan nodded and strode quickly across the laboratory. Left to herself the girl stood gazing about her, and finally she returned to a study of the polished, harmless-looking globe. It still didn’t appear much of an achievement for eighteen months of concentrated effort. Her thoughts began to wander—playfully, then dangerously. The curiosity that is within every human being was getting the mastery. The blue button, Nal had said. To press it on and off surely couldn’t do any harm? It looked tempting.

  She passed her fingertip gently over it, considered, and then she pressed it sharply on and off. Inside the metallic globe there was a faint whirring sound like blades spinning round in heavy air. Since the effect ceased the moment she released the button she tried again and jabbed the button inwards more sharply.

  Then to her horror the button top slipped just under the socket edge and remained jammed!

  Panic got her immediately. She fiddled and fumbled with her fingernails to get the button back into the central position, but it remained obdurate. Wildly she glanced about her for something thin and sharp. Above her the mystic metal globe had started to glow and the ghostly whirring had become a steady, constant sound.

  A pair of forceps on the bench seemed the most likely thing. She dived for them and then stopped dead, stupefied. Suddenly her left arm had been painlessly, completely amputated from the elbow! The incredible horror of the fact paralyzed her for a moment. Then she turned her head to stare at the impartial, glowing globe.

  Suddenly it was no longer a globe. It was a blazing sun and she was infinitely far out in space. There were a few seconds before the air inside her body exploded outwards in the pressure-free void, and then Mydia had literally blown apart a million miles from Earth.

  Nal Folan found the First Physicist in his most genial mood in the big, quietly furnished apartment he occupied in the center of the city. Grifa himself was a tall, eagle-nosed man, white-haired now, but with all the strength of two hundred years. When Nal entered he was busy at his desk under the flood of cold light radiance in the glazed ceiling.

  “Come in, Nal, sit down.” He motioned to a chair and then set aside his work and considered the young man across the desk. “I understand that you are ready to make your demonstration tomorrow morning?”

  “Of the electrical converter, yes,” Nal agreed. “I’ve worked it out to the last detail. I think it will fulfill all I’ve claimed for it—and thanks for giving me the time to finish it.”

  “It is the purpose of us Elders of Atlantis to allow promising young scientists to develop their theories,” Grifa smiled. “Otherwise, how could science expand? However, I sent for you so that I can have all the details. I want to think the matter over before tomorrow.”

  “I have everything recorded, sir. I’ll go and—”

  Grifa raised a hand as Nal half rose. “Sit down, boy. Never mind the actual technique—just give me the outlines. That will be all I’ll need for the moment. I haven’t even the vaguest outline of your plan, yet, remember.”

  “Well, sir, I’m seeking to prove that it is possible to study the exact position of an electron, instead of the present annoying condition wherein you can’t know the position and velocity of an electron simultaneously.”

  “In other words you have devised a means whereby the basis of all matter can be studied without, say, the very action of light impact itself dislodging the electron before it can be studied?”

  “I am dealing, sir, in probability,” Nal said quietly. “An electron, as we understand it, is merely a probability. It is within a given area of waves of inconceivable smallness. We cannot say for certain that it is here or there. We assume the probability that it is.

  “The waves in which an electron is assumed to exist veer off into space, maybe into other dimensi
ons, which makes the job of pinning down the actual position of the electron itself all the more difficult.”

  “Quite so,” Grifa conceded. “And what have you done about it?”

  “I’ve devised a converter. It emits energy waves that are identical with those existing around the ‘probable’ position of the electron, at which point of course the waves are densest. Therefore, instead of a central core if tremendous energy which weakens as it travels—as all waves weaken as they travel from the source—I maintain the same energy strength for any distance.”

  Grifa looked astonished for a moment. “What you really mean is that instead of the electron wave being infinitesimally small it can be made as large as—as you wish?”

  “That is it exactly,” Nal agreed, “because the original energy is carried onwards and outwards from the core for any distance we wish. It means that instead of having to try and examine an electron in a microscopic area we can have an area of several feet, yards, miles, whatever we wish. It makes the study of an electron wave and the electron itself absolutely possible.”

  The First Physicist was silent for a long time, brooding. Then he got to his feet and shook his gray head slowly.

  “I don’t quite like it,” he muttered. “The electron-probability, Nal, is the basis of all known matter. It operates in its small area by natural laws and because of that matter remains stable. If the area be extended, it means that the particular piece of matter involved will lose its cohesion. It might even be transplanted! Did you stop to think of that?”

  “I did,” Nal assented. “That is why I have devised a spring button instead of a normal switch. The particular matter I intend to treat tomorrow will only be exposed to the influence for a split second. Then we can study the result. Naturally, only split-second energy release can be used at first until we know what we are dealing with, otherwise we might unlock matter itself.”

  Grifa became silent again, gazing pensively out of the window. Then after a while he frowned and motioned Nal to his side.

  “What do you make of that?” the First Physicist asked, pointing.

  Nal studied the view of the lighted city, but it was only by degrees that he became conscious of something amiss with it. It looked as though a V-shaped wedge had blotted out one section of the lights with a darkness that was absolute. At the very apex of the wedge was a tiny glowing point.

  Even as he tried to understand the mystery, something passed through the building in which Grifa and he were standing. It was a curious surging motion as though an immense wind had passed through solid matter and then subsided again.

  “Great heavens,” Nal whispered suddenly, his eyes suddenly becoming round with alarm. “That point is approximately where the research laboratory is. Surely it isn’t possible that—Mydia!” he breathed. “But—but she couldn’t have—!”

  “What in cosmos are you talking about?” Grifa snapped, seizing Nal’s arm tightly. “What’s wrong, boy? You’re not suggesting that something has happened to your converter, are you?”

  “I—I don’t know. I hardly dare think—”

  “What do you mean by ‘Mydia’? What has a woman to do with it?”

  Nal turned suddenly. “I’ve got to find out, sir.”

  He headed from the apartment with long strides and the savant followed him. When they reached the street they found it jammed with milling crowds, and from here the amazing V-fault across the city was more than ever obvious. The buildings within this segment had entirely vanished. Those on the fringes of it were neatly, flawlessly, bisected.

  “Come on!” Grifa snapped, pushing his way through the men and women with Nal at his side. “There’s something devilishly wrong here.”

  With the realization that they were taking a desperate risk they hurried to the outermost edge of the V-section, but once they passed into it they experienced no ill effects. There was solid ground, smooth as the face a black mirror, from which all traces of buildings and the people who had been within them had utterly disappeared.

  Without commenting, though his face was grim, Grifa hurried along the smoothness towards the solitary point of light, which shone like a star. Then presently he slowed up, Nal beside him, as both of them became conscious of surging waves beating about them again.

  “There’s only one answer to this,” Grifa snapped. “That converter of yours is working—too well! We’d better get out of its influence. We seem to be in a direct line. That point of light is where the laboratory ought to be.”

  “I’m going on, sir,” Nal said grimly. “I left a girl in that laboratory—Mydia Fro. I intend to marry her. I’ve got to find her.”

  “You left a—”

  Nal did not wait to hear what more his outraged superior might have to say. He sped down the black, shining vista towards the solitary spot of light, oblivious to whatever danger there might be. In time be realized that the entire front of the research laboratory had disappeared and that the floors were visible sectionally with that glowing ball on the topmost floor of all.

  Nal raced through the entranceway of the building and up the stairs, finally burst into the laboratory itself. All the lights were out. What illumination there was came from that baleful ball atop its glittering pole. It was bright amethyst in color, setting up a tautening static in the air.

  Appalled, Nal fell back before that baleful circle. He looked about him anxiously. Of Mydia there was no sign. Breathing hard he raced over to the switchboard and found the jammed button. He beat on it frenziedly—and then stopped, his attention arrested by a new and horrifying sight. At his feet lay a perfectly severed forearm, appearing just as though it were cast in wax. He did not touch it. He just stared bewildered.

  Then, his rugged face ghastly in the lavender glow, Grifa came to his side, panting for breath.

  “Too late now for recriminations, Nal,” he said. “You say there was a woman in here? Obviously that arm belonged to her. It must have been severed by a shift in electronic paths—cleanly, painlessly. In other words, the probability that her forearm belonged to the rest of her arm suddenly ceased to exist and the forearm materialized elsewhere—on the floor here.”

  “But where is she?” Nal panted, staring around. “What’s become of her?”

  “I don’t know, any more than one can ever predict where a probability wave is. As to what happened, this button—”

  The First Physicist turned on it savagely—but at the same instant he found himself quite unhurt on a rising stretch of ground outside the city. Nal was beside him, not a lock of his hair disturbed, not one shade of alterationhis horrified expression.

  Grifa did not say anything immediately. He was contemplating the city and grappling with profound issues at the same time. From this rocky eminence it looked as though the city were splashed with inky holes where buildings had utterly vanished and left smooth, mirror-like ground. There was a disturbance in the air too, a wraith or so of wind, which in a climate automatically controlled at dead level calmness could only mean one thing—the Climatic machines had been affected.

  “Nal,” the First Physicist said finally, gripping the young man’s arm, “you’ve released something which we can’t stop—or at least that woman Mydia Fro must have done so. The button jammed and the converter ran on and on. That means that all the time it runs electron waves extend their area, in the way you outlined, and their extension shifts other waves, and so on ad infinitum.

  “The whole mass of probabilities which make up matter as we know it is in a state of complete flux. For instance, while we were in the laboratory the probability that we were there collapsed before the probability that we were here—and here we came, on the instant, without any conception of transit. That, I imagine, is explainable by an electron leaping from one orbit to another without ever being in the space between. No gulf is there to be crossed. One state dissolves and another appears, remote from the original state.

  “At any moment,” Grifa said somberly, “the probability that we are here m
ay collapse again and we may be—anywhere. In the former state matter was more or less stable. Now it is stable no longer.” Grifa clenched his fists and stared upwards at fast forming clouds. “I said it was something we couldn’t stop,” he muttered. “But we’ve got to! It can mean the end of the world—the probability, even, that the world itself does not exist, or anything upon it. Come with me,” he finished curtly, jerking his gray head.

  Nal said nothing, but he turned and turned and followed the savant down the rocky slope which led to the pock-marked city. They entered it by skirting its edges, avoiding the streets that were now thronged with surging, chattering people trying to discover what was happening. Many of the buildings still stood unharmed, including the one in which Grifa had his headquarters and, deep down in the basement, his private laboratory.

  He entered it in a few minutes with Nal behind and switched on the lights. “We are no safer from probability waves down here than we are anywhere else,” he said, “but at least we may have a chance to hit back. We can’t approach that converter-globe again without risking destruction or transplantation to heaven knows where. So the obvious answer is to destroy it from a distance by vibratory waves.”

  Turning, he went over to one of the instruments with which the laboratory was filled. He paused at length before an apparatus that reminded Nal of a telescopic reflector.

  “When we came from our home planet,” the savant said, operating switches that made the instrument turn on a massive central pillar, “we brought three of these vibratory guns with us in case there should be dangerous life on this world.

  “We never needed to use them and this one has remained in case of attack from space. It directs a molecular vibration upon any given object at any distance, passing through intervening matter in the form of an X-ray. Now, let us see what the predictor tells us.”

  He studied a balanced needle swinging in a vacuum globe and operated more controls. Nal watched the needle turn gently until it pointed exactly parallel with the direction of the gun barrel.