THEN, ON A later day, Kay brought visitors into the bedroom in the Bates home where she had nursed Cory for six long weeks: “Visitors,” she said, and left.
Cory said: “Hello, Nate. What brought you north?”
“You,” Goodrow said, gravely. He indicated the second man: “This is Bart Ludlow—an old friend of mine and a big muck-a-muck at the capital now. The governor sent him out to investigate this mess.”
Ludlow, a lean, mustached man, looked down with frank admiration: “So this is the great Cory Balleau,” he said.
“Nothing great about him,” Goodrow muttered. “Just a kid that got too big for his pants.”
Cory looked at Ludlow: “Are you a lawman?” he asked.
Ludlow nodded.
Cory’s face was white and gaunt. He turned and reached down under the edge of the bed. When his hand came up there dangled from it a cartridge belt and two bolstered guns.
“You’d better take them,” he said gravely.
Then Goodrow denied his muttered words of a few moments before by saying: “There’s an honor, Bart. You can tell your grandchildren that Cory Balleau handed you his guns.”
Goodrow sat on the edge of the bed and talked while Ludlow’ stood with his hands behind his back.
“All hell’s blown up around here the past few weeks. They got plenty of information out of Dorken before he died. And Frank Bates went completely to pieces. He had the heart scared out of him and all he wants to do is liquidate and get out of the country.”
“Are we going to get decent law around here now?” Cory asked.
“That’s right.” Ludlow’ said. “And it’s here to stay.”
“Just between us,” Nate Goodrow went on, “things are pretty mixed up now. Nobody’s sure what charges will stand and what ones will be dropped. Looks like Bates will be allowed to settle the Bendorf killing by settling some money on the widow.”
Cory had made no inquiry concerning his own fate and finally Goodrow got around to that.
“You’ll have to stand trial—no doubt about it. There’s a big point in your favor though. Frake was crook from the word go, Dorken deserved killing, and that posse was nothing but a bunch of outlaw’s Frake had gathered in from all over the west. I’m not saying you’ll come off scot free but I doubt if you’ll hang. Bates will be a state’s witness.”
“When it’s all over,” Cory said, “does that South Canal offer still stand?”
“What about the guy you killed down there?” Goodrow asked.
“I’ll take my chances there too.”
“Don’t think anybody’ll appear against you on that one. Sure, the offer still goes.”
“I’ll have a wife with me. How about that?”
“What do you mean how about it? How can you raise a family without a wife? If you haven’t got any kids who you going to brag to about what a gunman their old man was?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel like bragging about that,” Cory said, smiling wanly. “Frankly, I hate guns.”
The Floating Lords
THEY HAD been hurtling through space for months, the ten of them. Ten of the greatest scientific minds the world had ever produced. They were bound for an unthinkably remote point in the stellar cosmos—a destination further than men had even thought of, further than futuremen would ever travel.
Their course had been computed and fixed long before they left Earth. Every hour, every minute, of their flight—from the instant their space cruiser, The Theorist, shot away from Earth—had been predetermined.
The revolution of every one of the thousands of planets they had passed—the movement through space of the countless suns they had flashed by—the drifting, even, of space itself—all had been carefully considered, computed, and accounted for.
They knew every solar system, every galaxy, every island universe they had passed and were going to pass. They had, in fact, reduced the wearisome vastness of space to figures and points—lines and formulae. Which accumulated data was electrically recorded upon a sensitized chart before them, revolving in direct ratio to its size in connection with the vastness it represented and the speed of the ship hurtling through it.
Their goal was a point unguessably distant. They had come far. They had much farther to go.
It was quiet in the control room of the Theorist. Not even the sound of the atomic engines, hurtling them through the void at a now incomprehensible velocity, could be heard. There was no sensation of movement. There had been none since the first blast of the atomics that sent them rocketing from the Earth with an acceleration constant of 1 Earth Gravity. That had been four months ago. Four months of acceleration of 32 feet per second. They knew they were traversing space at a speed far exceeding the crawl of light. But there was no sensation.
They sat there. The ten of them. Five on one side of the revolving chart which showed them their exact position in the void, and five on the other. They were completely silent. Not even the sound of breathing interrupted the stillness.
Physically they were not imposing men, not muscular giants; nor were they, in the exact sense of the word, weaklings. They had something surpassing these material characteristics. It burned from their eyes. Mental power. Each was unexcelled in his own branch of science.
SO THEY sat there. Silent until:
“I presume that you five gentlemen will be entirely satisfied after wasting a year or more of your brief existences, when we prove for once and for all that your theories concerning the focal center are nothing more than a highly expounded dream.” Melton Sarzkoff, chief astro-physicist of the Universal Foundation, and leader of the five scientists seated about him representing that institution, spoke with a measure of boredom. Greeted with impolite silence from the Solar Scientific Research Society’s five learned apostles opposite him, he continued:
“Not to mention the fact that this expedition into nowhere is taking up a year of our time as well. And that length of time is only a rough estimate. And yet perhaps it is just as well. After this wild goose chase is completed I have high hopes that your Society will engage you in more realistic research.”
Melton Sarzkoff searched the five faces opposite him for some sign of unease. Especially did he glance at the stony features of Anthony Cregg, his leading rival in the field of astro-physics. Anthony Cregg had eyes only for the chart.
“I hardly feel it necessary to repeat that the mere idea of there existing a focal center of the Universe is preposterous.”
Anthony Cregg turned his gaze from the minutely revolving chart. His hard grey eyes fixed themselves on the taunting smile of Melton Sarzkoff.
“For the past four months I have sat here and listened to your mockery, Sarzkoff. To be perfectly frank, I am becoming unusually bored. You only condescended to make this expedition because you felt that I might be made to look a fool. It is quite apparent that you are beginning to suspect that my colleagues’ and my theory concerning the focal center of the Universe is not all the madness you make it out to be. And you’re afraid of the effect it will have on your reputation.” Cregg allowed a smile to ease the hardness of his eyes. “You should have been a Religious Sectarian, as you started out to be, instead of a physicist.”
Fury burned in Melton Sarzkoff’s eyes. His face flushed and his hands gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles went white. Anthony Cregg had hit the one sore spot in Sarzkoff’s scientific armor. The fact that he had started out to follow religion as a vocation and then suddenly denounced it for the atheistic brotherhood of higher science.
JOHN BRENTNER, of the SSRS, interposed.
“If you two would cease acting like jealous suitors it would make it a lot more pleasant for the rest of us. After all, whether you agree to it or not, you both are scientists—highly respected at that—and this is a scientific expedition. I suggest we forget that we represent rival institutions and cooperate on the business at hand.”
Anthony Cregg sighed. “Very neatly put, John. I apologize. If I’ve hurt
your ego, Sarzkoff, please consider me deeply distressed. And now, our position.”
All eyes reverted once again to the chart before them. The horizontal indicator was bisecting the edge of a small star cluster. Cregg switched on the visiplate.
The blankness was Immediately gone. Dazzling points of light became visible. Each star was checked. Each point of light was accounted for. The course of the ship through the cluster was computed; it was found to be exact. Anthony Cregg sighed and was about to switch off the visiplate when something attracted his attention from the void.
Out of the blackness of space, scintillating with the pinpoints of light from the star cluster, an opalescent mist suddenly grew visible. It was an intangible substance of nothing. But it was not nothing. For nothing could not be seen. And this could. Around him, Anthony Cregg heard the sudden buzz of excitement.
“Look!” The voice was that of Melton Sarzkoff. “There is something out there!”.
The scientist’s words were corroborated by the others.
“But what is it? We’ve charted every stellar body on our course—it isn’t anything conceivable.”
With each passing second the mist that was not a mist grew plainer; it also grew larger. It vaguely resembled a huge cloud in space, a cloud that looked like a cloud, and yet was not. The visage covered fully three quarters of the visiplate now. Within seconds the tremendous speed at which their ship was moving would shoot them beyond it. Already they were passing it.
“I can’t understand it,” Anthony Cregg muttered, his impassive features suddenly showing a frown. “I’ve never seen anything like this in space before. I’d like to analyze it but we’ll be beyond it in less than a minute.”
The visage now covered nearly the full visiplate. Suddenly it did, and seconds later began to edge off the plate. The Theorist had passed it. Anthony Cregg looked once at Melton Sarzkoff. He saw there the same bafflement he felt was on his own. Then he glanced at the receding space phenomenon.
Before his features showed bafflement. Now they showed sheer amazement. The space mist had formed into a definite shape! Where before it had resembled nothing in the absolute sense of the word, now it had instantaneously assumed the shape of a perfect sphere. And the sphere was bearing down on them. Was actually moving at them with a speed greater than their own incomprehensible velocity!
Sheer amazement left the scientists speechless. Their eyes were glued to the visiplate. Melton Sarzkoff suddenly came to life.
“I can’t believe my eyes! That mist is actually bearing down on us. Only something controlled by intelligence could cause such a thing. But what—”
THE SPHERICAL mist had ceased to rush upon the ship. It had reached it and now completely enveloped it. The ten Earth men could actually seem to feel it as it folded over the vessel. And with it there came another feeling. A feeling of something weird. A sensation indescribable. It was as if some mighty force—unnameable, utterly alien, and incomprehensible—had settled about them.
Silence descended upon the control room of The Theorist. Silence that was tense, ominous. Ten sets of eyes no longer gazed at the visiplate. There was nothing there to see but an opaque mist. They gazed at each other. Ten of the greatest scientific minds the world had ever produced. They who had solved every problem man had offered them. They stared at each other; with the realization that here was something their combined brains could not even pierce.
There was a sound. A sound that first was nothing audible. It simply commenced to exist. There was another sound. It might have been the chorus of rushing winds; it might have been the symphony of an astral organ; it might have been anything. They did not know. Then there was the voice.
“I have traced your thought patterns, men of that Solar body you call Sol. I am pleased to find that you are capable of the rudimentary elements of thought. As you would say in your own somewhat crude, but acceptable, language: Greetings.”
They sat there, the ten of them. Rigid. Stony. And the voice faded out. It had come in a rush of sound, bass, turbulent, vibrant. Then came the words. From nowhere in evidence, but seemingly from within their very brains. Anthony Cregg was the first to regain his presence of mind. And his face was transformed. Gone was the stupefaction. In its place eager interest. The scientist was in him again. Here was something he could understand. That had been a voice. A voice must come from an intelligent source. Some being had spoken. Anthony Cregg voiced aloud:
“Who are you? We saw only what appeared to be a mist in space. What are you?”
Silence for a moment. Then the sounds. And the voice.
“It has been a long time since I have conversed with intelligent beings. A time inconceivable to you. My name even I have almost forgotten. In your brief tongue it would be useless to say it. Call me Orklonch, it is as near as I can come.
“As to what I am. Aeons ago I was even as you, born, educated, and matured. My home was on a planet that has long since ceased to exist. Even as the sun about which it revolved. When I reached my maturity I was chosen as one out of millions of my kind for what you would term immortality. My mind was set free from my mortal casing. I am what you would term an entity.
“I was immortalized for the purpose of increasing the scientific knowledge of my race. For countless centuries I did this for what I thought was the betterment of my people. But then I discovered the uselessness of my endeavors. Wars had sprung into being. Wars of power, hatreds, and jealousies. Members of my race were no longer interested in science—in the buildup of a galactic civilization. They were more interested in tearing down that which I had tried to help them build.
“So I let them destroy themselves since I could not stop them, with reason. They died in their own stupidity. I alone was left. The last of what had once been a great race. I would have destroyed myself along with them, but I was incapable of doing so. I am not material, though I have control of material forces.
“For countless measures of your time I have existed; traversing the distances of the voids in eternal quest of knowledge. And there are others like me. But always I have returned to the scene of my birth. I have assumed the visible image you now see. When your presence was brought within my range of thought I had been in what you would term a quiescent state. Your coming aroused my interest. You are far from your home planet. Where and why are you bound?”
THE VOICE faded. There was silence. Silence in which the ten scientists gazed at one another. They sat unmoving. Five facing five. Scientific opponents on a voyage based on theory. Eight of the ten looked to their leaders. Anthony Cregg, face immobile, but eyes alight with awe, gazed across at Melton Sarzkoff. It was Cregg who answered.
“We are of that Sun known as Sol. We are beings even as you once were—as your race once existed. In our Solar System exists much the same conditions as you have related. There are wars. There are hatreds and jealousies. There is destruction and turmoil. But there is also science. I and my four associates are venturing to prove the existence of something that we hope may turn our race’s thoughts to science once again. We are trying to prove the existence of a focal center of the Universe. A point around which everything revolves. A spot in the Universe from whence arose the primal force. We feel that if man gains the knowledge of this scientific realization he will bend his efforts toward unity in building a Galactic civilization with all the resultant powers at his disposal.
“These other five men disbelieve our theory. They have accompanied us to disprove our contention. The course of this ship has been computed beyond ertor to a point which we are nearing. If we fail in our attempt man will have nothing to base his future on. No truth. And he will go to his destruction even as your race did.”
Anthony Cregg lapsed into silence. Across from him Melton Sarzkoff spoke.
“What my noted colleague has said in part, is true. I and my associates are on this voyage to disprove this theory. It is, in itself, inconceivable. The Universe is boundless, infinite. Being such, there cannot exist a focal center. For
if there is, then the Universe is finite. Our interest is purely scientific. We will reach this hypothetical point of the Cosmos and prove our contention.”
There was silence again. Then the voice renewed.
“Beings of Earth, your aim is commendable. But it is futile. You are entering upon things that you cannot conceive of. Turn back to your world. There are truths that are beyond your reach. Even beyond mine. I am old. Older than you can conceive. My advice to you, my command to you, Is, return to your world.”
The voice faded. The scientists gazed at one another. For an instant there was fear. Then it was gone. The determination of a goal being strived for, of an ideal immovable prevailed. Their silence was refusal. The voice came again.
“Think. Think strongly, beings of Sol. You who are called Sarzkoff, I see a past of doubt. To you, science followed a thing called religion. Do not tamper with this machine we know as the Universe. Science is not all.”
The voice was gone again. And this time it did not return. In its place there was a silence. A silence in which ten men gazed at one another. Gazed in doubt, awe and, in some, the first faint vestiges of fear.
They were not cowards, these men. They did not know what it was to be afraid. At least, they hadn’t before. Now they felt for the first time how really small they were—pebbles cast against the shores of infinity. For out there in the void, hovering over their vessel, was a being. A being so old it could not recollect its age. A being so wise as to be inconceivable to them. A being of pure thought. Unbounded thought. Beside him the ten of them were as nothing. And they suddenly realized it. It shone in their eyes as they gazed at one another.
“It is incredible,” Anthony Cregg breathed. “Never in my wildest dreams had I hoped that there could exist a free entity.” He addressed the nine men around him: “You have heard as well as I, the advice given to us. What shall we do? Abandon our expedition?”
One by one he searched the faces about him. He saw the mingled emotions of awe, unease, and indecision registered there. He saw that he must assume the initiative.
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 37