Edge of Time

by Donald A. Wollheim (as David Grinnell)

  Williams jumped back, yelled again in some outlandish gibberish, dashed around the room and grabbed the metal ruler from the desk. Brandishing this, he advanced, shouting unintelligibly.

  The reporter dodged away from the swinging ruler. Marge, momentarily behind the crazed scientist, ran out the door and shouted for help.

  It was probably but a minute more before help came, but to Warren, facing the madman, it seemed an hour. He managed just to keep out of Williams's reach; the metal ruler, wildly swinging and slashing through the air, missing him by fractions of an inch.

  Then Kenster dashed in, this time a welcome sight, followed by Enderby.

  The big guard grappled Williams from behind, wrapped his arms around the scientist's until the man was helpless in the guard's grasp. Enderby circled around Williams until he faced him, then suddenly slapped him in the face and shouted his name.

  The figure of the scientist seemed to sway, then became limp. His face cleared. The fury and stress that had stamped his features vanished. He closed his eyes a moment and opened them again. Now he recognized Enderby.

  "Hello, Doc," said Williams in a quiet rational voice. "That was sudden. Who's holding me?"

  At a nod from Enderby, Kenster let go his grip. Williams dropped his arms, smiling apologetically at Warren who was staring at him, puzzled. "Looks like I gave you a scare. But it wasn't I who was doing it. You should never have released those straps. Hyatt was to have called me in another half hour."

  "But—but I don't understand," said- Warren. "It seems to me that you were out of your mind."

  "He certainly was," said Marge. "Completely batty, I'd say."

  "No, no," smiled Williams. "You see, you weren't dealing with,me. You were actually fighting with a captain of the Imperial Guard of Gwath-modr—an empire on Planet Two of NNW two sixty-five. I imagine he got quite a shock waking up here to find himself a prisoner of strange beings like us."

  "Huh?" said Warren and Marge together.

  Enderby laughed suddenly. "Of course! We must have forgotten to tell you about this. We'll have to explain. But Williams, you'd better get to writing up your memories before they fade."

  The scientist nodded. "Yes. I've had a fascinating four months. Rugged, but colorful." He walked over to the deck, sat down, selected a pencil and began writing.

  Enderby nodded towards the exit and they all trooped out without further talk. Kenster took his leave and went back.

  Enderby, Warren and the girl stood just outside the little chamber.

  "I don't follow," said Marge. "He said four months—but he was here at breakfast and at supper last night, too."

  Enderby nodded. "Yes, he was at breakfast with us here, but between breakfast and now he has spent four months on a microcosmic planet. Actually it probably took longer than the last hour and a half."

  "I thought nobody could actually penetrate the microcosm," said Warren, "yet now you say he has been there."

  Enderby answered, "Both statements are correct. Nobody can penetrate the micro-universe physically, but it is possible to visit it ex persona. Come into the main dome and I'll explain."

  He led the way to the hemisphere of the microcosm. Once there, standing before the everchanging marvel of the vast black, star-strewn global space, anything began to seem possible.

  Enderby pointed to the various telescopes set up around the outer balcony. "It was an accident that led to our discovery of the means of transposing minds with inhabitants of the microcosm. One day, about two months ago, Rendell came on duty to find Weidekind slumped before a telescope, unconscious. When he did not respond at once to ministration, I was called. Between us we finally managed to bring Weidekind back to consciousness.

  "He told us that he had been studying a particular planet on which we suspected intelligent life to have reached a fair state of advancement. He had slowed down the microcosm with the heaviest application of magnetic drag possible, in order to attempt to make some particularly detailed photographs on this particular planet which occupied an outer-fringe sun readily visible.

  "He was focusing on this world very carefully, straining his mind to the task. Then he said he felt suddenly dizzy, felt himself more or less drawn, as in hypnotic trance, to the vision he was seeing. His instrument at that moment was focused on a mass of markings we believed to be a city on one of that world's continental land masses. He said he felt as if he could not take his eye away, as if he was being sucked into it.

  "His thoughts became jumbled, and for an instant it was as if two minds were mingling in his own. Then there was a moment of complete blankness and when his eyes again came into focus, he found himself standing in the street of a completely alien city and under a completely strange sky.

  "To make it short, he found himself suddenly occupying the body and mind of a manlike inhabitant of a city on that microcosmic world. He could understand all that he saw and heard because he was in full possession of that being's memory, language cells, and abilities. He knew his name, his position, his home, his duties, his life and memories. And to put it simply, for the next full year he lived that being's life!

  "He was like a man who seizes control of another's car, only to find the road he must take permitting little if any deviation. He could observe, he could take some minor control, but it was as if most of his real self had been left behind.

  "When we brought him back to consciousness, only a short time had passed, during which Weidekind's body was comatose. We know now that the mind of the alien being was occupying it, yet in this instance it was evidently unable to cope with or oontrol Weidekind's human body. This happens occasionally in such transferals. Yet in this short interval, the planet had run through a full year of its development.

  "Weidekind remembered most of his experience. He was able to write out the history of those twelve months of alien life; he was able to remember most of what he had known of the people he had visited, their history, legends, customs, hopes. As it happened they were in an interesting phase, one that corresponds to the very dawn of our recorded history, something like what it must have been at such places at Mohenjo-Daro and Akkad.

  "We determined that what had happened was a phasing of sympathetic natural vibrations, along the same principle as the visions observed hereabouts. Only here, it was a deliberate phasing—two minds of rather similar outlook, of about equal intensity, simply phased each other."

  Enderby stopped, looked into the microcosm. Warren and Marge had been listening intently. "And from that hypothesis you have worked out this system and use it regularly?" he asked though he knew the answer already.

  Enderby nodded. "Yes, we worked it out to a practical system. It's quite strenuous to the mind—we find it dangerous to attempt more than once every other day. And sometimes the alien mind occupying the body of our transferee may be able to control it. He could do great damage in the hour or two he'd be at large, so we worked out the method of strapping a body down before the transfer was accomplished, and giving a sedative as well. The little chamber attached to this globe is our transferal room.

  "Our explorer is attuned to the planet in question; he concentrates upon its surface. Under hypnosis we increase his capacity and his drive to merge. If a mind exists that is capable of switching, the change occurs. Then when the reversal occurs, the experimenter immediately sits down and records all he can recall. We find that a delay in doing so causes a rapid fadeout of the knowledge—much like trying to remember a dream too long after awakening.

  "We now have a regular pattern of transferals going on, mainly Williams and Hyatt, occasionally Weidekind and Rendell. The plain truth is that we can use more men in this work. There are so many worlds to visit and so many to check back on. These planets are passing through decades and centuries at vast rates. And these are the important years from the viewpoint of human parallels."

  He looked at Warren with slightly arched eyebrows as he finished. The reporter stood silent, his thoughts in turmoil. It sounded intriguing, it
sounded like the adventure of a lifetime, yet relatively harmless. Marge voiced the thought he was reluctant to express:

  "What happens if the person on one of those worlds, whose mind you're occupying, dies or is killed? Who really dies?"

  Enderby shrugged. "Frankly, we don't know. It hasn't yet happened, though there have been some narrow escapes. But still it's a chance that we'll have to take. It is right at this time that we may be able to start bringing back inventions not yet known to our own world; to make discoveries of undreamed-of practical value to human living."

  The reporter smiled. "You know, Doc, visiting strange places is really my business. The other men here are not trained observers; I am. I'd like to be added to your list of regular transferees. So I'm volunteering here and now. When do I start?"

  Enderby nodded. Marge looked from one to the other, gulped. "Golly ... I think I'd like to take that cruise myself—just once, anyway; to see what it's like. I bet you could use a woman's point of view in your write-ups."

  The old scientist glanced at her. "Quite possibly. I rather think you have a point there, Miss McElroy. Suppose you think it over. Anyhow, tomorrow, I'd like to give Alton a start at it." He glanced at his watch.

  "Suppose you spend the rest of the afternoon going over the files on Planet Six of the SSW Twenty. I think we'd better look in on it without further delay. Tomorrow may be none too soon."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CARTER WILLIAMS and Enderby were waiting for Warren at the appointed time the next morning. He met them in the little chamber by the side of die main dome. He had studied the previous records of the planet he was going to visit, and was impressed by the spottiness of his knowledge.

  There had been but two previous mental transfers there and the time lapse in microcosmic reckoning between each visit had been several hundred years. He knew that, judging by Terrestrial historical epochs, the inhabitants of that particular world should be somewhere in the same stage of existence as the Earth itself. That was, of course, providing that there had been no unusual setbacks, like geophysical disasters, or devastating post-medieval wars. He knew its earlier history in a general paleontological sense as well—in fact, he had seen photos of the very birth of the planet. In one sense he would come there as the most learned and knowing man on the planet; in a more immediate sense he would be among the most ignorant and least prepared.

  It was to be an adventure the like of which—he realized —none had even dreamed. His whole career of a reporter in strange lands, of one who had taken notes amid the shots and flames of revolution, who had rushed into earthquake areas before the tremors had died, of reporting from up front in wars of distant lands—this career might, in a measure have prepared him. But also it might well be outdistanced within the next few minutes.

  And yet of course he could be spending the next few microcosmic months—and months they'd be for him, even

  as a dream may seem to occupy days yet actually take but split seconds—merely in a dull and routine world, as a farmer plowing a field or a laborer in a mine. None knew what role he would find himslef occupying, or whose mind would come into tune with his.

  Enderby injected into his arm a mild sedative which would rest his body while arousing his mental awareness. Warren lay down on the wooden bench and Williams strapped him down.

  Now Enderby opened a little circular window on the wall over his head which gave into the dome within sight of the microcosm. An apparatus was wheeled over and fixed so that it caught a beam of light from the microcosm. Within the group of lenses the beam was clarified, enlarged and directed down into Warren's eyes. He looked into this apparatus and it was like looking into a telescope. He saw a star gleaming with several tiny dots of light attending it. This was the microcosmic sun whose designation was South South West sector 20. Now it enlarged rapidly and one of the attendant discs came more sharply into view—the sixth planet of that sun.

  Warren watched the planet enlarge until it was a misty disc upon whose surface dark and light features could be seeu—oceans and land masses. There was a crescent area of darkness where the day-night line showed. Warren saw that the planet had two moons, one large and brilliantly white, the other smaller and darker.

  He felt drowsy and felt himself sinking into a foggy sort of awareness. The voice and sound of the two men standing near him faded and the apparatus itself faded away. Now only the planet hung in his view and he seemed to be hovering over it.

  He became aware of a curious sensation as if somehow he were in two places at once—as if, impinging on his consciousness were other sounds, alien and unnatural. Suddenly there was a flash of pain, a sensation of unbearable pressure, a terrible roaring in his ears. Everything went black.

  Slowly he returned to consciousness. His hands and arms and legs began to feel sensation again, they were pressing still on the wooden frame of the bed and he felt the tight leather straps encircling his chest and legs. There was something binding his brow. He felt nauseous, and his ears were assailed by an odd pulsing humming.

  Warren's first impulse was of disappointment. The transferal must have failed, for he could still feel the bench and the straps and could still hear the humming pulse of the microcosm. So, expecting to see Enderby hovering over him, he opened his eyes.

  But there was no Enderby in sight. Instead he saw a brilliant glistening globe hanging before him in blackness. The larger satellite of Planet Six, he thought. The apparatus must still be focusing. He watched this moon for a while, wondering when the transferal was going to take place. But nothing seemed to happen.

  Then it occurred to him that the vision of the moon was remarkably clear for a telescopic image refracted through several lenses from a moving microcosm. The satellite, in fact, was strikingly clear—he could see dark and lighter details against its ghstening, brilliantly reflecting mass.. It's a surface of ice, he thought, adding, of course it's the Ice Moon.

  Aroused by sudden suspicion, he twisted his head, turned his vision, and gasped. He was not in the little room at all! He was somewhere else. But where?

  There was no other person in sight. He was cooped up in a very tiny chamber, whose walls encircled him within a couple feet on every side. He moved his hands and found they were not strapped down. He raised his hands and felt the strap encircling his chest. He unbuckled it, unbuckled the brow strap that seemed holding his head back against the frame. He looked around.

  He was half-reclining in a hard-framed seat, cushioned as if against shock. The pulsing humming sound was coming from below him. In the little chamber were tied-down boxes of equipment, a device for cooking food, a water purifier. He knew this without asking. In front of him was a board with strange controls beneath a wide window through which he was looking upon the Ice Moon.

  For a moment he wondered how he seemed to know just where he was, and what he was doing. He knew that he was in the nose compartment of a nuclear-powered experimental rocket. He knew also that he was heading for the Ice Moon, with the object of making the first landing on it.

  He knew . . . but there was a clicking on the board, and a voice spoke near him. "Are you there? Base calling Commander Wool-house in Kah-one. Please report."

  Without thinking, he threw a switch on the board. "Wool-house reporting. All is well. Everything in running order."

  "Congratulations, Dau! The Director of the Council sends his personal regards. We're all watching you and waiting for you! How are things up there?"

  As Warren's voice began to reply, he sensed a part of his mind was sitting back astounded. The transferal had been a success. The mind of Warren Alton was now that of some being calling himself Dau Wool-house—this last name was in the native language, of course, but this language was entirely familiar to the brain Warren occupied. This Commander was a rocket pilot—was, in fact, the man selected by the military forces of his country, the Councilary Democracy of Souva on the planet Komar, to be the Columbus of Space for that world.

  This rocket trip to the Ice Moo
n of that planet was the result of dozens of years of rocket research, of design and trial, of stratosphere shots, of sub-satellites, and manned rocket planes, and of unmanned robot rockets to the Ice Moon and the Stone Moon as well.

  Now Warren/Dau recalled the months of arduous training he had undergone. He recalled his selection from the many qualified volunteers, and how proud he'd been of his selection. It seemed to him that he was a curious mixture. The brain of the Komarian could and did respond naturally and easily to what was expected of him. But Warren's own mind seemed to be both part of and separate from that brain. He could direct it if he wanted, or he could let it guide him by its acquired memories and knowledge. It was roughly as if, dreaming in a deep sleep, he was aware, without waking, that he was dreaming.

  At a request from the base, he began to read off the dials on his board, reporting back. He replied to messages with ease and confidence, recalling each person as they spoke to him.

  But, Warren asked himself, why this particular man? Then he realized that the answer to that lay in his own nature. On Earth, Warren Alton was an adventurer, a seeker of strange places; on Komar, Dau Wool-house was of a similar inclination. Both men had been strapped to frames at the same split-instant, both had been subjected to strange tensions.

  What more natural then that their two minds had phased in chemical sympathy?

  At a thought, Warren looked down at himself. What sort of being was he? He knew something of the Komarians, but searching his new brain and glancing at his body, he brought back to mind the nature of the Komarians. They were human, yes. He was, he judged by memory, the equivalent of six feet tall. He was bald, as were all Komarians, and had but four fingers to each hand. His eyes were slanted and blue, his ears round and flat. He was wearing a one-piece flying suit, pressurized against space. But he was otherwise quite distinctly of the human family as those on Earth knew them.