He sat up, started to get out of bed. There was a very faint light from the stars coming through his open window that showed a dark shadow bulking near the door; something that had no place there.
"Who's there?" he called. And instantly the shadow darted forward. Warren sprang out of bed, rushed to meet it.
A fist crashed a glancing blow against his head. Warren swung, felt his hand brush someone's shoulder. He grabbed for the stranger, but another fist struck him in the chest and then the stranger hurled him away with force and turned.
Warren lunged after him, but his hand on the stranger's back slipped and in another moment the unknown was out of the door and gone. Warren leaped to the door, which had been left open, and looked down the hall. He could see no one. Somewhere a door snapped shut and the building was silent.
Warren closed the door of his room and snapped the light on. On his desk his pile of papers, the manuscript of his experiences, had been brushed to the floor, as if the intruder had picked it up, but dropped it when Warren had interrupted him.
The reporter picked up the manuscript, leafed through the pages putting them in order. None was missing. He sat down in thought. Enderby was right in assuming they were important, and Stanhope's evidence of a spy was now corroborated in full. Someone at Thunderhook was keeping a private record of the project's discoveries—obviously for transmission somewhere else.
There was no doubt that in this rocket material there were military advantages to be gained. From this point on, discoveries would come from the microcosm which would be of immense beneficial signficance for mankind—but which might disclose to an unscrupulous possessor technological secrets that would give such a party—or such a nation-world mastery.
He made sure his door was locked and the manuscript tucked under his mattress before he went to sleep again that night. In the morning he sought out Enderby and taking him aside told him what had happened.
The old scientist was greatly disturbed. He agreed that precautions had not been adequately taken to safeguard the data of the project.
Later that day, during the lunch break, Enderby announced a new set of regulations. From now on all data relating to new discoveries was to be deposited with him to be placed in the safe. A guard would be on hand at all times to cover this. New locks would be placed on the records-hall doors and windows, and every man was warned to take careful precautions with anything that might be of value.
This announcement set forth further discussions on the nature of the work ahead. There was a meeting of the leaders, Enderby, Steiner, Marco and the others. One of the results of this was the decision to allot specific planets to specific men. As Warren had been involved so well with Komar, he would henceforth transfer to that planet regularly, rather than drift around the microcosm. In this way, a certain specialization could be achieved. Weidekind, for instance, would have another world—the one where the battle of tanks had miraged on the mountainside. Williams was assigned to the world that had once harbored the empire of Gwath-modr. Hyatt, a world near the center of the micro-galaxy whose inhabitants were also pushing close to space flight. And Rendell, still another.
Further, they would try to keep contact with these respective worlds at least two or three times a week—and so try to keep the histories from having too great lapses. Twice a week might well mean a thousand years between eras, or even more, depending on whether the microcosm was being magnetically braked or not.
It was further agreed that every two days a conference would be held of all transferees to co-ordinate their knowledge and to build up the history of the microcosm. Up to now they had been dealing with isolated worlds emerging from the original magma and passing through the same stages of evolution known to Earth. Now they were passing into stages that lay in Earth's future and so the discoveries and histories would be of immense value in charting the probable future course of human fife on Earth and in our own infinite universe.
On the next day, Warren was ready to revisit Komar. He had expected to wait a third day but it was the opinion of the staff that results of the opening of the space age be charted at not too great a gap.
Warren again was strapped to the frame, again injected, again found the focusing device bringing before him the telescopic presentation of Komar and its neighboring planets.
There was a moment of dizziness, a period of blackout, of sharp vertigo.
Then he heard a voice speaking in rolling sonorous tones. He recognized standard phrases of glittering generalities, references to "our glorious traditions," and other over-familiar terms. In his mind he knew these statements should be thrilling, for they were obviously appeals to pride and glory. Yet he found himself indifferent. They were cliches, dull, tarnished word combinations that had all but lost meaning.
His eyes were closed, so he opened them. He was sitting in a room, and the voice was speaking from somewhere within it. He turned his head and saw in full color the face and shoulders of a man on a screen. A television set, before which were sitting in rapt interest a woman and two young boys. The woman, he knew, was his wife, the boys his children. They were listening because they were proud of their father and the event that was about to transpire.
Warren's Komarian mind knew what was coming, supplied the answers. But Warren himself, occupying that brain, was excited. His excitement took hold of the host's brain and the man moved his chair around and watched the speaker.
The speaker was Fod Stone-gorge, the present Chairman of United Komar. The occasion was very special for two reasons. First, it celebrated the Five Hundredth Anniversary of the opening of the Space Age, and the same occasion was the announcement of the imminent launching of the first expedition into stellar space.
The whole of Komar was excited, and he remembered that before the Chairman had come on, delegates had spoken briefly from each of the six planetary colonies of Komar. These colonies—two of which were now fairly populous on worlds with large arable land masses, and the other four of which were domed-in mining centers on in-
hospitable and airless satellites—were the pride of Komarian civilization, which was now on a world basis.
Now Fod Stone-gorge paused dramatically, his plump cheeks quivering, the perspiration on his bald head gleaming. He waved a finger at the audience, comprising the entire population of the planet, and made the announcement.
The starship was ready. It would take off for the nearest star in three days. Its crew had been selected with care. They would sail it out beyond the farthest planet, under the newly developed cosmic ion drive. Approaching the speed of light, they would hurl the ship through the six light-years to the nearest star, make their landing, survey it, and return. The crew would be placed in suspended animation during that time so that the trip would be tolerable to them. They could be expected back in about forty years' time.
All this Lo Brake-hold knew perfectly well. His family knew it, too, for they had had months to reconcile themselves to his loss. Lo was the man in whose body Warren's ego had been transferred, and Lo was one of the twelve crew members of the starship.
To Lo the speech was only another dread milestone before the day of departure. He was willing; he had been selected by test—a spaceman of great experience. His family had acquiesced. As a matter of fact, Lo's wife would go into special suspended animation at a local hospital and be kept under until his return. He would not lose his mate. As for his sons, they would go on, they would be fully matured men by his return.
The next three days passed in feverish activity. After the announcement to the world, there were public exhibits of the starship; there were last minute preparations. Came the day, and Lo bade farewell to his wife, and went with the other eleven men to the spacefield.
Fod Stone-gorge was there himself. He was a typical politician, full of bombast and loud, meaningless words, thought Lo Brake-hold—with Warren in agreement.
The starship, appropriately named the Dau Wool-house, was strange. Warren now consciously exerted himself, bega
n to probe the Komarian mind for details of the ship. It was a beauty. He saw now what the next five hundred years of space flight would bring, saw the infinite developments and ramifications of the rocket drive, the full application of nuclear power to the space-ship, the evolution of a synthetic gravity within the ships. But this starship was still further advanced. Its drive was a new development, based on the currents of cosmic rays between the worlds, and it would not achieve its full speed until well beyond the outermost planet. Then it would spread out something like sub-magnetic sails—great invisible force nets for miles on every side. Thus, catching cosmic particles, it would be drawn along in their streams and rush like a leaf on them through the cosmos.
After the leave-taking and the speeches, came the takeoff. After the take-off, they were rocketing past the orbits of the planets. After the last planet, a stony-cold, barren rock a billion miles from the parent sun on which one lonely enclosed observatory had been built as Komar's then-farthest outpost, signaled its final good luck message.
Then the cosmic sails were unfurled. The charts within the great ship showed the lines of force, and there was a period of tension as the Members of the crew wondered whether they would find the streams of cosmic ions. Then a twitch, then a rush, then they were off, moving faster and faster across the black depths of empty space, heading on toward the tiny sharp point of light, which was a sun six light-years away. Their destination.
Lo Brake-hold saw all this from bis post. And Warren's mind wondered if Sterner had charted that distant star. If he could go back now, for a moment, to Thunderhook, he might anticipate what would be coming. Now the signal came for the crew to withdraw to quarters.
Lo lay down in the cocoon-like net that was waiting. It closed over him like a pod, it sealed him down. He felt a moment of panic, of suffocation. . . .
Warren opened his eyes suddenly and looked up. He was back in the little chamber next to the Dome. Above him the focusing apparatus was being wheeled away by Hyatt. Warren turned his head, said, "Wait."
Hyatt was startled. He gave him a look. "Why, a moment ago you were under. What's happened? I'd swear it took!"
Warren's eyes fell on the clock by the desk. It was exactly one minute since he had gazed originally into the telescopic image of Komar. One minute—and it was already fifteen days since he had arrived on that microcosmic world!
"Hyatt, hold it. In about an hour I want you to put me under again. Meanwhile get me unbuckled. Ill try to jot down the details of some marvelous space-flight inventions before they get blocked out."
Hyatt unbuckled him and he set to work, sitting at the desk and scribbling out the key secrets of the advanced rockets, of the nuclear drive, jotting down notes on the other technological items in the mind of Lo Brake-hold, star-explorer.
His immediate task finished, Warren resumed his position on the frame, and Hyatt adjusted the vision. It took but a glimpse of the star system itself, of the region of SSW 20 and vicinity, before Warren blanked out. He had but one momentary thought; he had, in his haste to put down what he knew, simply forgotten to ask Steiner for a briefing on star SSW 19—the place to be visited.
The blankness seemed to linger for a while. It was as if he were in deep sleep. Then gradually the sleep dissipated and became replaced by a feeling of great ennui, of pain in his joints and of fever. He opened his eyes and saw that the sleeping pod was open. He roused his Komarian body, and as Lo Brake-hold he stepped down.
It was painful waking up after eight years, and the rest of the crew felt much the same. It was perhaps a week before any of them felt fit. Vitamins, high-concentration diets, and special exercising machines brought them back to good shape after their long sleep.
The star was close. They saw its shining fight large against the sky and they saw that it had three planets—two giant gaseous ammonia worlds, and one small hard-surfaced planet.
The small world was slightly less in diameter than Komar. It had a bearable atmosphere; its heat extremes were within Komarian toleration. After circling it for two days, the Dau Wool-house settled for a landing on a green and pleasant continent.
The crew looked out on meadows not too different from those of their home world. They saw no sign of large life, but they did see some insect forms.
A group went out, came back safely. Then Lo Brake-hold and five others went out, and trekked through the plain to the distant hills.
They toiled up the hills and came to caves. They looked into the caves, and saw things that appeared bright and shining. The things bright and shining also saw them—and came out to greet them. They were the bright and shining eyes of a band of creatures straight out of a Komarian nightmare.
They were beings twelve feet high, possessed of six multi-jointed legs, possessed of great beaked heads that snapped and probed for the strangers.
Two men were killed in the first attack then Lo and his companions destroyed the monsters with their hand atomic sprayers.
The four Komarians turned and trekked back to the ship, but before they got there a band of manlike beings emerged from trap doors in the meadow. The trap doors were the surface entrances of the subterranean villages of the thinking beings of Planet 1 of SSW 19.
The four Komarians tried to parley with these manlike primitives, and for their efforts two more were killed. The atom sprayers cleared the meadow and the trap doors snapped shut in a flurry of terror by the primitives.
Lo and one other were almost back to the starship when a being flashed out of the sky like a hawk upon a helpless chick. This strange creature was something like a giant wasp and something like a huge dragonfly and a lot like a pterodactyl. It struck the only two beings on the whole planet foolish enough to walk in plain sight under the sunlight.
As Lo's life flickered out in the second of impact, he had just for a split second seen the defensive fire flicker from the guns of the Dau Wool-house, first starship of Komar. . . .
As Warren Alton sat up on the framework bed in the room next to the microcosm dome, he knew what would happen if he was within the mind of a man experiencing death. He'd awaken on Thunderhook Mountain with a splitting headache.
But headache or not, he wrote the story down, and told it that night to a spellbound audience in the main hall of Project Microcosm. The technical details of the star drive had, however, been locked safely away.
CHAPTER TEN
"So NOW WE KNOW what happens in the event of a death during transferals," said Steiner, clasping his hands together on the table as he leaned over the report of Warren
Alton's experience. "Our man simply returns to consciousness here."
They were seated around the main table in the afternoon next day, conferring on events in the microcosm. At this session they passed around each transferee's reports for the reading of every member of the team. The details of the various future inventions were separately recorded, but the general account of the development was set forth.
Marco disagreed with Steiner. "I am not sure that it is always necessary that it be that way. It seems to me entirely possible that under some circumstances the ego of the microcosm man temporarily phased into our Earth brain might simply remain—permanently overprinted due to shock and to the original power of the mind. We have been fortunate not to have a death occur during one of these visits, but we must not be surprised at anything. Remember, this transferal is mutual—and the universe of our making is on a full basis of equality with our particular section of this universe in which we live."
Enderby nodded. "Well, this all remains to be seen. An interesting speculation, but so far just that and nothing more. I see a more interesting development here." He stacked together the eight reports that had been turned in since their previous session, ruffled through them.
"Have you noticed how much these accounts have in common? Here we have visits to eight widely separated planets ' in this microcosm, eight out of a hundred thousand possibles, and yet of these eight inhabited worlds, seven have now worked out some form
of space flight. Two have found techniques of star travel, and the rest are progressing along the same line.
"It seems to me that we have here a clear indication of the course of human society. We know that in the past these worlds passed through much the same sort of periods as our own Earth did—savagery, nomadic society, agricultural communities, slave-keeping societies, medievalism, the rise of industry, electric and atomic energy, the rise of a world viewpoint in place of varied national viewpoints, and now space travel.
"I think it obvious that all this points to a natural sequence in the movement of planetary intelligences. But I wonder what comes next? So far none of the inhabitants of these planets has yet met another. Star flight will undoubtedly bring that about in short order."
Warren chuckled. "My first experience was hardly conducive to star colonization. I wonder if anybody on that expedition ever got back?"
Williams laughed. "You'll find out, I think, soon enough. But the first star expedition from Diol—my world—was a success. I wasn't on it, though. Didn't have your luck, Warren. Read all about it on the news tapes while working behind a counter in a synthetic farming center."
Enderby smiled. "I have a feeling that events will move mighty fast. They've been jumping rather quickly each trip now. The long periods are over, when all we found were just savage tribes. Over for good."
Warren nodded. "We can't dare let any of these worlds go too long. Can't we put more men on?"
Enderby shook his head. "I really don't dare. Steiner and Marco must keep on with their astrophysical observations. They are also of value. Bear in mind that most of this transferal work is actually a side line, a by-product of the original purpose of this project."
"How about taking up Marge on her offer to transfer?" asked Warren. "She's interested. And she's not dumb by any means."
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