“Look, honeybunch,” he said slowly. “If I tell you all I know and suspect about Wulkins, will you keep out of my hair?”
“Daddy, couldn’t we keep him? He’s all broken up inside now, isn’t he? We could make believe he’s still alive—”
“Very well!” Denham capitulated. “I may as well tell you for you’d go right on talking about him anyway. But maybe you won’t ask so many questions if I tell you.”
“All right, Daddy. Tell me.”
Denham ran his fingers through his hair. He reached for his pipe. A moment later he was squinting at his daughter through a haze of tobacco smoke. He knew that the smoke was bad for her. He wished she’d realize that and go away.
When she nestled closer to him he set the pipe down despairingly and put his arms about her.
“When we bought him he was all clogged with rust, remember? He wasn’t vibrating. But that roller coaster ride—the jogging—must have started him up.”
“Uh-huh!”
“Now don’t get excited,” Denham warned. “It isn’t anything that will break out on you like a rash if you can’t understand it. Here’s what I think happened. When Wulkins started to vibrate he warped space in all directions. Very strongly in front of him and a little on both sides of him. De Sitter’s soap bubble universe.”
Denham scowled, rubbed his chin. “Physicists claim there are tensions which simply can’t remain in ordinary space. They shoot right out of our space like—a cork from a champagne bottle. Something outside of our world creates them and, when they get into our world, they can’t stay there.”
Denham reached for his pipe again. “But if something came into our world from outside and built up tensions in itself, it could pop right back again, carrying a part of our world with it—perhaps.”
Betty Anne stirred impatiently on her father’s knee. “Are you talking to me, Daddy?”
“No!” Denham grunted. “Just thinking out loud. Here’s how I’d tell it to you. The world’s where we are. But there’s another place—where we’re not. Maybe a lot of other places, all pressed together close to where we are, with just a thin film of emptiness separating them. People live there too maybe, and, for all we know, they may be trying to come where we are. Sick to come where we are.”
“And they can’t?”
“So far as we know they’ve never been able to,” Denham told her. “If they came at all, it would have to be in something pretty complicated. A machine of some sort. You see, it’s a little like traveling into a far country at enormous speed. You’ve seen trains. They’re complicated.”
“Go on, Daddy!”
“Well—Wulkins is a machine and he’s complicated. You don’t know how complicated because you’ve never looked inside him. But you can take my word for it, he’s as complex as you are.”
“Complicated means all mixed up, doesn’t it Daddy?”
“That’s right. Sometimes it means mixed up in a rather simple way, and then you’ve really got something to worry about. But Wulkins is complicated in a dozen ways. Looking inside him is like looking into a big bare room and hearing a lot of noises below the threshold of sound, and seeing pictures on the wall that are there one minute and gone the next.”
Denham’s head had begun to ache. He put a hand to his brow and withdrew it quickly, as though he didn’t really want to find out if he was running a fever.
“It’s even worse than that. You can hear sounds outside the room, if you keep on staring and listening. And you don’t need earphones. You can see colors, too, that never were on sea or land.”
“Go on, Daddy!”
“Well, maybe the people couldn’t come themselves. So they sent Wulkins to see what he could see. A dimension-traveling robot. And maybe he got clogged with rust before he could return to his world with samples of our world. Little things his makers have asked him to put into his knapsack, an old black bag, a peppermint stick, a tropical butterfly.”
Denham smiled thinly at his daughter. “Or bigger things he’d have to vibrate back, like a little girl who was born curious and likes to torment older people for no reason at all. Or maybe she has a reason those other people would like to ask her about.”
Betty Anne looked genuinely frightened. Denham said hastily: “Don’t think it doesn’t scare me! But it’s tremendously important too! So important a delegation of pompous screwballs—” Denham grimaced—“world famous scientists to you, honeybunch—are coming to your father’s house just to look at Wulkins.”
“Unh—they are?”
“Tomorrow, honeybunch! Now do you understand why I can’t let you play with him?”
Betty Anne screwed up her face. “Well, if you don’t want me to, Daddy, I won’t!”
* * * *
Several hours later two small, pajama-clad figures moved cautiously down the central stairway of the Denhams’ house. One of the figures was Betty Anne, her hair braided for the night. The other was her brother, whose manner was that of a sure-footed conspirator who had taken great pains to dramatize himself.
Johnny’s expression was Machiavellian and he spoke with an air of mysterious authority, as though he were addressing not only his sister but the sulking shadows as well.
“Know what I’m going to do when I fix Wulkins up?” he whispered.
“No, what?”
“Build a peep show in Freddy Gilroy’s backyard and fit it so Wulkins can’t get out. We’ll drill a hole in a board and watch him trying to get out like we did with the snapping turtle!”
Betty Anne looked scared. “Freddy nearly got his hand bitten off,” she whispered. “And Daddy was awful mad. You’ll be good and sorry if you do that to Wulkins.”
“Aw, Pop never stays mad at me,” Johnny told her. “I know how to handle him.”
“I wish I did.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Johnny said pridefully: “I know how to handle tools, too. I can fix anything, if I try hard enough. Pop told me I looked like a little grease monkey the day I was born.”
Betty Anne came to an abrupt halt, her hand on the banister. “When did he tell you? The day you was born?”
“Don’t be a dope! How could a baby understand a thing like that?”
“What’s a grease monkey, Johnny?” Betty Anne asked, casting a swift glance back up the stairs.
“A mechanic, you dope! Pipe down, willya? You want him to hear us?”
The children were at the foot of the stairs now, tiptoeing through shadows toward the rear of the house. Johnny moved a little faster than his sister, his eyes shining with anticipation.
“Hurry up!” he urged. “What’s the matter? Afraid!”
“No. But I just remembered something. You can’t reach the light in the cellar. You’re not tall enough.”
“So what?” Johnny whispered. “I’ll climb up on the workbench.”
“We’ll be all alone with Wulkins in the dark,” Betty Anne exclaimed, a catch in her throat. “If I was a scarecat I’d be afraid. But I’m not.”
“You are too,” Johnny said. “Don’t fool yourself.”
There was a brief pause at the head of the cellar stairs, punctuated by an odd silence. Then down the stairs in total blackness the children crept. Down the stairs and across the cellar with their hearts fluttering wildly until—“Oh, Johnny, I’m scared. Johnny, where are you?”
Instantly the light came on, revealing Johnny crouching on the workbench, his eyes bright with alarm.
The alarm disappeared when he saw that his sister was unharmed. The robot was standing utterly motionless a foot from Betty Anne’s outstretched hand, its long arms dangling, its globular body box half in shadows.
“Daddy left him standing up,” Betty Anne said, as though aware of her brother’s thoughts. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“Naw!” Johnny muttered. “He said if he caught me down here he’d—”
Johnny colored to the roots of his hair. “Well, what are we waiting for? Hand me that screwdriver.”
Tinkering is a specialized art. It is much more than that—it is an exact science. But every science, every art, no matter how specialized, has its mysterious short cuts. When the tinkerer is a child, soft spots occasionally open up in the hard mechanical cement which welds theory to practice.
For a child does not conform to any pattern in his tinkering. He ignores all the rules and relies on perseverance, curiosity and a semi-mystical legerdemain which has been known to empty orchards and whisk the frosting off cakes in a time interval too brief to be measured by the instruments of human science.
There is a right way of tackling every problem and there is a wrong way. But there is also a way which is neither right nor wrong, but just—a way.
With Johnny it was simply a matter of knowing he could get Wulkins running again, if he tried hard enough. There was no need for him to go before a delegation of world-famous scientists and justify his faith in himself. His confidence was boundless and completely beyond the reach of adult skepticism.
After fifteen minutes of tinkering the workbench was smeared with grease and bright with the tools which Johnny had used and discarded. But he wasn’t discouraged—not by a long sight.
Wulkins was beginning to shine. Most of the rust had been removed by Betty Anne, who stood beside her brother with a bottle of metal polish in her hand. But Johnny had eyes only for the glitter of intricate mechanical parts. He was using his brain and his hands, all his skill, in a way that sent a surge of confidence spinning through him.
“Stop jarring him, Betty Anne!” he protested. “You’ve polished him enough. Hey cut it out!”
He whipped his hand from the robot’s vitals as he spoke, a gleaming wire-cutter twisting in his clasp. “You want me to cut myself? I can’t work on him unless you stop polishing him. What’s the big idea?”
“You want him to shine, don’t you?” Betty Anne asked.
Johnny started to reply. He got out a single word, a clearly articulated “Aw—” Then—his speech congealed.
Wulkins had turned his head and was looking at Betty Anne. But he didn’t reach for Betty Anne. He reached for Johnny. His segmented metal hand shot out and fastened on Johnny’s arm before Johnny could leap back.
Betty Anne squealed with alarm and retreated into the middle of the cellar, her eyes darting to Johnny’s face.
There was no hand over Betty Anne’s mouth, but for an instant she remained as silent as Johnny. The floor spun under her, and her head whirled faster than the floor. The workbench whirled too, and the tools and Johnny.
Suddenly she was screaming, at the top of her lungs. But the robot paid no attention to her. Instead it fastened its bulbous eyes on Johnny and began to tug at his hair. It seemed amazed because—Johnny was Johnny! It grabbed one of Johnny’s hands and turned it over and over, as though it had never seen a human hand before.
It tweaked Johnny’s nose, tugged at his ear. Betty Anne stopping screaming suddenly, feeling all cold and ashamed inside because she couldn’t do anything in keep the robot from treating Johnny like a—a limp rag doll.
The robot wasn’t very rough with Johnny. But she didn’t like it, she couldn’t stand it, and she started to scream again.
She was still screaming when the robot shifted Johnny around until just his head emerged from under one stiff metal arm and started toward her across the floor…
Molly realized that the stars were changing before her husband did. It was like awakening in the still dark, and reaching out for something that wasn’t there—a child’s crumpled doll, or a warm little hand in a cot where a child’s body had lain.
There was something in the room that wasn’t right. It was nothing very tangible, nothing that could be seen. But it was there and she could sense it. Swiftly she got out of bed, threw a shawl about her shivering shoulders and darted to the window.
For an instant she stared out with her face pressed to the pane, her thoughts in a turmoil.
The stars were different! Beyond the black boughs which interlaced in the moonlight a yard from her face the far-flung splendor of the night sky had dwindled to a pallid glimmering. There was no Milky Way, no Great Dipper. Nothing but a sprinkling of very distant stars with a faint nebulosity behind them.
The moon had dwindled too. It was not only smaller, but it had a dull, coppery sheen, as though it were reflecting the light of a dying sun in a universe that had passed away.
Molly clenched her hands swiftly, utter horror in her stare. There’s got to be some explanation she thought.
Suddenly her eyes widened and her hand went to her throat. Out of the house in the moonlight and across the lawn below there strode an enormous shadow. The shadow was angular, grotesque, and it moved with a convulsive trembling of its entire bulk.
As Molly stared she saw that there were two smaller shadows attached to it. The small shadows seemed to jut out from it and to move with it across the lawn. But the smaller shadows were also in violent motion, as though they were trying desperately to break loose from the larger shadow.
And then Molly saw what had cast the shadow! It must have been clumping toward the road at the very edge of the lawn, because when it came into view the moonlight struck down so sharply against it that it stood out instantly in all of its angular ugliness.
It was a robot! But not the hideous little robot her husband had refused to destroy. No! A colossal shape of metal, eight feet tall, its huge gleaming arms wrapped around two small, struggling human forms.
“Johnny—Betty Anne!” Molly screamed the names of her children as she rushed back across the room to her husband’s side. It was a stricken cry, but it was also a cry of protest and fierce defiance.
She ripped the bedclothes from Denham, gripped his arm and gave it a furious wrench. “Ralph—Ralph! Wake up—get up! The children!”
Denham was out of bed so quickly his features had a tautly masked look, as though his reflexes had brought him to his feet while his brain was still asleep. But the queer thing about it was that he seemed to know that something horrible was taking place.
At first Molly had screamed in sheer panic and then at her husband to wake him. But now she spoke quietly, as she usually did when life turned cruel and ugly, tapping her reserves of strength.
“Go to the window and look out. Hurry, darling!”
When Denham reached the window the robot was disappearing into a weaving blur of vegetation at the edge of the lawn. But he caught one brief glimpse of the metal giant, a glimpse which galvanized him into instant action.
He started toward the clothes closet, then swung about, and ripped his dressing gown from the foot of the bed. He wrapped it around himself and sat down on the edge of the bed. Few men could have drawn on their shoes in exactly eight seconds. But Denham did it.
Beads of sweat were collecting on his forehead when he said: “I’m going after them. It’s Wulkins! There’s been some sort of dimension shift and Wulkins has grown larger. He must have vibrated himself back into his world, and the cottage with him.”
“You’re not going alone,” Molly said, thrusting her husband’s trousers into his lap. “Put those on. It won’t take a second. You can’t run in that dressing gown. Anything else you want? Is there?”
“Get me a flashlight and an automatic pistol. Downstairs in my desk!”
“I said I was going with you.”
Denham sprang up. “All right, all right! I’ll get the automatic. You get something on you.”
When Denham and Molly emerged from the house, the night had taken on an alien aspect. Before them the lawn was a shining strip which stretched in a straight line to a quivering edge of dar
kness which seemed to recede as they plunged toward it.
In a moment they had crossed the lawn and were racing along an unfamiliar road beneath a canopy of heavily-scented vegetation. On both sides of them towered enormous trees, black against the pallid sky. They were different from any trees Molly had ever seen. Their boles glistened in the moonlight, and their branches seemed to tear and pluck at the night sky like the claws of rearing beasts.
The edge of darkness had moved on ahead of them and was still dividing the landscape, so that they seemed to be moving toward an ink-black, impenetrable void which had swallowed up everything in their path.
No, not quite everything. In the sheer walled immensity of the blackness little glints kept appearing and vanishing, as though a few startled fireflies had become enmeshed in it and were trying to get out.
It was Denham who saw something beside the glints. Perhaps because he was thirty feet ahead of Molly and the edge of darkness had receded further for him. But it may have been something else, a keener vision, or the courage to believe what he saw.
Not that Molly lacked courage, but there were times when it slipped away from her while fear drilled into the back of her mind.
As she ran she heard her husband shouting. “Molly! There’s something moving right up ahead—something bright!”
But though the words brought a catch to her throat she saw only the darkness, just the trees and the darkness stabbing down. Her heels lifted queerly as she ran and her hands were clenched so tightly it seemed her fingers must crack.
Then, suddenly, the edge of darkness seemed to dissolve, to float away, and she saw a thick clump of shrubbery bisecting the shadows at the edge of the road. Directly in front of the thicket the road turned sharply, circling out to sweep on past it.
Denham had stopped running. He was gripping the automatic pistol firmly, and advancing on the thicket with his shoulders hunched.
The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales Page 24