Escape Across the Cosmos

by Gardner Fox

  “In exchange for what?” Carrick asked slowly.

  Alton Raymond chuckled again. “I like you, Carrick. You’re so refreshingly independent. Most men would have been on their knees to me an hour ago, asking for my help. Now it’s me who’s in the begging position.”

  “Me—help you? How?”

  “You’ll understand better after you’ve read Hannes Stryker’s notebooks and diary. They tell you everything I know. If you have any questions after reading them, I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.

  “Fair enough.”

  “After that, I’ll make my offer. It’s big, Carrick—bigger than anything you’ve ever dreamed of. I’ll make you a rich man if you go in with me as a minor partner.” His eyes touched Mai Valoris. “You can give your girl friend here a whole planet for herself, if you want. You’ll be one of the ten richest men in the stars—if you do what I want you to do.”

  “The notebooks,” Carrick reminded him.

  “Yes. You’ll want them but—first, the diary.”

  The fat man brought them out of the lower level up to a book-lined study, a great library and literary workshop where many of his advertising writers and magazine editors worked out new ideas. Diffused light made visibility as close to natural sunlight as it could be done mechanically. There were easy chairs for reading, desks for writing, audio-typers and sono-tapers. The reference works were as good as, or better than, most public libraries, Carrick decided after a swift appraisal of the heavily packed shelves.

  Alton Raymond was at a wall safe, putting his ten finger-tips on ten glass discs. His fingerprints were recorded electronically and the locks activated. The door of the safe opened quietly. The industrialist reached in and brought out a thick book bound in green leather. Carrick had never seen it before.

  “It belonged to Hannes,” Alton Raymond said heavily. “As administrator of his estate, these papers were turned over to me.” He lifted out a folio of loose sheets. “These are his Kay Cee 7 notes. I’d advise you to read the diary first. The notes may be clear enough to a bioniphysicist but to me they’re mumbojumbo. I lack the background to understand them.”

  “I do, too,” Carrick admitted. “I was a soldier, not a scientist.”

  “Yes, of course. It slipped my mind.”

  Carrick took the diary and the folio and went to an easy chair. As he sank into it the lamp behind it began its glow. There was a control device in the arm of the chair which could be used to regulate the brightness, but Carrick found it acceptable enough.

  “I’ll just browse,” Mai said when the fat man glanced at her. “I have some reading to catch up on after a couple of years on Dakkan planet.”

  “You’ll find the latest fiction and non-fiction right over here. I always buy five copies of each new book which is found worthy of my time, just for my guests.”

  They went on talking. Carrick did not hear them.

  He was deep in the green diary.

  Today I got my first response from the gateway. It opened enough so that I could look through into the other world. It is a fair and pleasant land, with grassy meadows and distant hills and flowers nodding in the breeze. I am putting this badly, but I am no rhetorician.

  I sat for an hour, entranced by what I saw.

  This is the culmination of a dozen years of off-and-on research into the theoretical possibility of worlds in the micronivibretic range. All matter is energy. All energy vibrates. A different vibratory rate should give us different levels of basic energy and also of matter itself. Matter which will vibrate at a sub-normal rate will not be discernible on a normal level, which is our own. Thus this new universe which my subsidiundum gateway has uncovered has remained undiscovered, unguessed at, until now.

  My eyes have seen the proof.

  There were five pages of closely written words dealing with mathematical formulae, none of which Carrick could understand, though he read it carefully. Hannes Stryker had had his first hint of this other-world while experimenting with a block of subsidiundum, a dozen years ago. He thought he had seen a vision, for just beyond the block, glimpsed as though the heat waves rising above a hot radiator on a cold winter day, he saw a woman swimming in a pool of water. The scene seemed painted on empty air. It lasted about thirty seconds, then faded out.

  It was his first hint that subsidiundum might possess properties equally adaptable to the micronivibretic level, as well as to the normal. He began to make tests. Twice he lost precious blocks of this neutro-element which had been found first on a dead planet of the Alcyone star system, seven hundred years ago. It was a metallic element in the neo-Alpine group. Its symbol was SB, its atomic weight 31.21, its atomic number 231. Malleable and ductile when heated, unaffected by any known gas, water or alkalis except under high temperatures, its density was 7.94, its hardness 6.5.

  Hannes Stryker became an authority on subsidiundum.

  Over the years he came to know its properties, its unique powers. He bought blocks of it and with them constructed an arching doorway in a locked corner of his laboratory. He built atomic engines, modified and strengthened for the titanic power of the planetary magnetic field which he used as a fuel. An alterometer converted the magnetix flux into diometric energies.

  When he fed diometric energy into the atomic engines, they poured radiation into the blocks of subsidiundum. The arching gateway glowed bright red, then blue, then white. And nothing else happened.

  Ah, but now—

  By the use of a special lens he could transfer diometric energy into a form of negative radiation. This was the secret of the subsidiundum. It would work with negative radiation. Now he could look through the gateway into the other world.

  Carrick lifted his eyes from the crabbed writing, blinking them. Alton Raymond was gone. Mai Valoris was in a companion chair five feet away, deep in a star seller. He turned back to the diary.

  I have improved upon the diometric motor and the negatron lens. Now I can maintain the gateway for long periods of time. Theoretically forever, if I so desire. Lately I have been passing various objects through the gateway into the other world. A steel bar. A wooden dowel. A ceramic vase. A plastic comb. A rubber glove. There have been no bad effects. Apparently the radiation bath from the gateway as they are passed between the blocks of subsidiundum alters their vibratory pulse to the micronivibretic level. I have brought them all back into our own universe and tested them. They are the same as always. Thus I have concluded that matter in our universe, passed through the gateway, is adaptable to life in the other world.

  What of living things? Tomorrow I will begin such tests.

  The kitten lived. It went through the gateway without showing signs of pain. It began running after a field mouse within a minute after it was inside the other-world. I lost sight of it for an hour and a half but I saw it later, moving through the grasses after a fluttering butterfly. I shall lure it back if I can. If not, I will put another kitten in the other-world tomorrow but I will tie a cord about it.

  Kitten 2 is back home again, perfectly normal.

  I am terribly excited. I should make more tests but I am going to take the plunge. Tomorrow I will step through the gateway. It is the only thing to do. I will not ask another human being to do what I will not.

  It is done. I went into the other-world. And I have come back to our own universe, safe and unchanged. I sit here writing, marveling at the magnitude of my discovery. I have a whole new universe to give mankind. Planets and stars by the billions. Tremendous wealth and natural resources. There is a diamond as big as my fist which I picked from a bubbling brook today as I walked across the surface, which serves me now as a paperweight. And on my fingertips is oil which seeped up from beneath the planet to its surface.

  Wealth and riches uncountable.

  And people. Oh, yes—there are people. Humans just as we are, only not nearly so far advanced, who call their world Slarrn. Their skins are whitish pink, like ours, and I find myself remembering the old vision I saw of a woman swi
mming in a pool, these twelve years or more ago.

  I spoke with a woman whose name, as near as I can make it out, is Palmira. We conversed manually, by signs; I do not know her language. But she has a quick intelligence and is consumed with curiosity. I have promised to meet her tomorrow. She has agreed to teach me her language. I will bring a language primer with me, filled with pictures and with simple words. It will simplify my task enormously, I believe.

  Palmira is a woman of great abilities, but for some reason she is afraid to admit it. I have been visiting her every day for longer and longer periods, so that now she and I can carry on a conversation—limited, to be sure—but still, a conversation. When I was complimenting her today she clapped a hand over my mouth and looked terrified. She would not tell me why but only shook her head so that her long black hair flew every which way.

  She is a beautiful woman. At odd moments I think perhaps I have fallen in love with her. She is a mature woman, no longer a girl, but this is as I would have it. I am not a youth any more, myself. Perhaps two inches over five feet tall, and a little plump, she is charmingly happy. Her laughter peals out like faery bells. She makes even dour old me laugh.

  We went for a swim together, she and I. It was a warm day in Slarrn and the water was cool and sweet. Palmira slipped out of her tunic without embarrassment and waited for me to doff my own garments. It is like an Eden, here in Slarrn. Its people are simple and unspoiled, and for the most part, very happy. Like children. They call themselves the Llynn.

  They have no science, as such. Life is enjoyed in grass hut communities called kaygans. As we do, their men and women mate for life and bring up their children by a rigid moral code. They hunt for their food with lances and with bows and arrows. When I offered to bring a blipper to make their hunting easier, Palmira seemed afraid and put her hand over my mouth again.

  As if someone might be listening, someone who hated wisdom.

  It is very puzzling.

  I have been staying in Slarrn more and more often of late, and for longer periods of time. I have met the chutan of the kaygan—a chutan is like a chief—a big man, blonde and very strong, an expert with the weapons of Slarrn. Sometimes I feel I am in a glorified stone age of old Mother Earth. The name of this chutan is Maarl. I like him, he is sincere, friendly, apparently glad to have me as part of his kaygan.

  On all my trips into Slarrn I carry small plastic bags. I fill the bags with dirt, with sand, with pebbles, with bits of leaf and bark of trees, with dead insects, small animals, also a few hairs and nail clippings of the Llynn. I intend to study these, to see how they differ from ourselves: that is, from people of our universe. I brought a flask once, and filled it with water. I have taken samples of their sunlight with a litesorber. Their stars are not so very different from ours.

  I am writing this late at night. Tomorrow I am going into Slarrn again, for an extended period of time. Three weeks, perhaps a month. I intend to marry Palmira by her rites. I have made enough tests to let me know that she can come into my universe. She is willing to join me here; indeed, she seems surprisingly eager to do so, for some strange reason she will not tell me. She has promised to tell me when she is—how did she phrase it?

  “‘—when I am safely in your world, where nothing can happen to me because I tell you why I am afraid!’”

  Yes, those are her exact words. I find them odd.

  Mai Valoris was sleeping. Carrick stared at her above the diary, smiling at the way her blonde hair lay across her shoulder and made a thin golden film across her cheek. He settled himself more comfortably in his chair and let his eyes drop to the written words.

  The neat precision of the holographic account was gone in this next and last section of the diary, Carrick discovered. There were blotches of ink and words so hastily scrawled that they gave evidence of having been scribbled down in great haste or great emotion.

  I have been to Slarrn for the last time.

  Everything has changed.

  Palmira was waiting where the gateway enters her universe. There were flowers in her hair and she wore a new tunic, elaborately stitched and extremely attractive. She ran into my arms and …

  I must get control of my nerves. I am a scientist, not a schoolboy. Palmira kissed me and I held her tightly. We said the silly nonsense all lovers say to one another. We walked through the sunlight and the green fields hand in hand and down to the deep stream where we always go swimming. Palmira told me that all was in readiness. The priest—the ytharn—was coming from a nearby kaygan to marry us.

  We swam. We kissed again, in the water and on the grassy bank. I am very much in love. I did not believe I ever could be in love. In Slarrn I am a different person, I guess. More boyish, more carefree.

  We walked back to the kaygan.

  Suddenly Palmira shivered and pressed against me. I put my arm about her shoulders protectively. “Take me with you, Hannes,” she said. “It is the time of shosthin.”

  “What is shosthin?”

  “I dare not tell you. But come, come away. Even now we may be too late. Even now—”

  Her eyes changed first. They rolled a little in her sweet face, wildly, as if she had lost all control over their muscles. Her eyes rolled with insane movement and then went backward as if she were about to faint. But she did not faint. She stood with only those awful whites showing in her tanned face and her face began its change.

  Lines appeared in it. The sweetness was gone and in its place I looked at terror. Abysmal terror, that might have been born in the heart of a primal man, when face to face with the anger of his shaman or with such mighty convolutions of nature as a hurricane or volcano, to which he ascribed godlike attributes.

  And over the terror lay an ancient evil.

  The terror was Palmira, the human side of her. The evil was—that of the thing that had taken possession of her. This I understand now. Then, I assumed she was having a fit. I shook her, but found her flesh like marble, her strength unbelievable. She thrust me away so easily yet so powerfully that I fell down.

  She turned and began to walk.

  Not toward the kaygan and the ytham and our happiness, but toward a part of the planet which I had never seen. I caught her arm. I tried to hold her back. I pleaded with her to tell me what was happening. She was mute.

  After a while I saw others, the men and women of her kaygan, the chieftain Maarl among them, walking as she walked, with a curious lifelessness that hinted at their helplessness. I ran to them, hoping one of them could tell me what had happened, but they were dumb and apparently deaf. They walked and I went with them, beside Palmira, so that I might protect her from whatever it was that caused this terrible change.

  I do not know how long we had been walking before I saw the city of Andraar. It was built of white marble and glazed tiles, of polished red sandstone and black diorite. It was beauty in the sunlight, utterly magnificent. I stared, forgetting even Palmira in my amazement.

  Andraar was no accomplishment of stone age man. It showed the touch of scientific knowledge, of advanced arts and progressive creativity. Even the architects of our own star civilizations might be hard pressed to duplicate those sweeping roof trusses and breath-taking curved domes. My head swam with endless questions.

  Who had built Andraar? Where were they now, the men and women who had labored to achieve such loveliness in the building arts? I had neither seen nor heard of them in all the time I had been here on Slarrn. What had become of the race that made this miracle?

  Palmira could not tell me, nor Maarl, nor any of their people. I ran after them, down onto a winding road that glittered white and clean against the green of the surrounding grasses. As I came near it, I saw that its edges were overgrown with weeds, though the structure of the road itself was as new, seemingly, as the day it had been laid.

  The road led down into the city. I could see from the crown of the hill where I stood that the city was dead. There was no sign of life in it. Only the people of Palmira’s kaygan could be see
n, moving slowly and steadily along its streets. They were walking definitely and with a purpose. Toward what? I sent my eyes on ahead.

  A great red tower lifted into the sky, almost in the geometrical center of the city. It appeared that they were approaching it, walking faster now as if whatever had hold of their minds was flailing them as with a goad. I ran after them, safe in my immunity to whatever force it was that held them in its grip.

  To the portals of the red tower I ran, and through them. The bronze doors stood open, carved as are the cathedral doors of the star planets with figures and scenes from the life of Andraar. I gave these bas reliefs a bare glance, yet I thrilled at what I saw. The men and women shown on the door were far advanced from the primitive people of the kaygans.

  The thought came to me that the Llynn had been great, long and long ago. Then some terrible tragedy had struck, swiftly and remorselessly. From the heights of their advanced culture the people had plunged downward into decay and ruin. Retrogression had set in.

  I tiptoed across a black floor toward a great white staircase. The last of the Llynn were walking up the treads, their back stiff, their heads held high, arms rigid by their sides. I could not see Palmira. I ran past the others, hurrying. Hurrying!

  At the top of the stair I stood on a great, checkered floor. The people of the kaygan were walking across it toward a block of oddly veined masonry surmounted by a baldachin of solid gold. I looked about me. There was nothing here, no presence, no machinery, no force which might account for the Llynn trance.

  Ah, and then—

  A shimmering transparency formed about the block.

  It gathered slowly, seeming to flow from the bodies of the people in an invisible wave, as if whatever force had been in the minds and the bodies of the Llynn to compel their attendance, now had returned to its home. The people still stared sightlessly, but they were losing their ashen look. The marble whiteness of their flesh was turning pink as frozen blood began to pump once more in their veins.