Campbell-BIInfinite-mo.prc

by John W. Campbell

  “Let's forestall trouble,” suggested Arcot. He drew his ray pistol, and turned it on the ground directly in front of them, and about halfway between them and the Neoliths. A streak of the soil about two feet wide flashed into intense radiation under the impact of millions on millions of horsepower of radiant energy. Further, it was fused to a depth of twenty feet or more, and intensely hot still deeper. The Neoliths took a single look at it, then turned, and raced for home.

  “Didn't like our looks. Let's go back."

  They wandered about the world, investigating various peoples, and proved to their own satisfaction that there was no Atlantis, not at this time at any rate. But they were interested in seeing that the polar caps extended much farther toward the equator; they had not retreated at that time to the extent that they had by the opening of history.

  They secured some fresh game, an innovation in their larder, and a welcome one. Then the entire ship was swept out with fresh, clean air, their water tanks filled with water from the cold streams of the melting glaciers. The air apparatus was given a new stock to work over.

  Their supplies in a large measure restored, thousands of aerial photographic maps made, they returned once more to space to wait.

  Their time was taken up for the most part by actual work on the enormous mass of calculation necessary. It is inconceivable to the layman what tremendous labor is involved in the development of a single mathematical hypothesis, and a concrete illustration of it was the long time, with tremendously advanced calculating machines, that was required in their present work.

  They had worked out the problem of the time-field, but there they had been aided by the actual apparatus, and the possibilities of making direct tests on machines already set up. The problem of artificial matter, at length fully solved, was a different matter. This had required within a few days of a month (by their clocks; close to thirty thousand years of Earth's time), for they had really been forced to develop it all from the beginning. In the small improvements Arcot had instituted in Stel Felso Theu's device, he had really merely followed the particular branch that Stel Felso Theu had stumbled upon. Hence it was impossible to determine with any great variety, the type of matter created. Now, however, Arcot could make any known kind of matter, and many unknown kinds.

  But now came the greatest problem of all. They were ready to start work on the data they had collected in space.

  “What,” asked Zezdon Afthen, as he watched the three Terrestrians begin their work, “is the nature of the thing you are attempting to harness?"

  “In a word, energy,” replied Arcot, pausing.

  “We are attempting to harness energy in its primeval form, in the form of a space-field. Remember, mass is a measure of energy. Two centuries ago a scientist of our world proposed the idea that energy could be measured by mass, and proceeded to prove that the relationship was the now firmly entrenched formula E equals MC squared.

  “The sun is giving off energy. It is giving off mass, then, in the form of light photons. The field of the sun's gravity must be constantly decreasing as its mass decreases. It is a collapsing field. It is true, the sun's gravitational field does decrease, by a minute amount, despite the fact that our sun loses a thousand million tons of matter every four minutes. The percentage change is minute, but the energy released is-immeasurable.

  “But, I am going to invent a new power unit, Afthen. I will call it the ‘sol,’ the power of a sun. One sol is the rating of our sun. And I will measure the energy I use in terms of sun-powers, not horsepower. That may tell you of its magnitude!"

  “But,” Zezdon Afthen asked, “while you men of Earth work on this problem, what is there for us? We have no problems, save the problem of the fate of our world, still fifty thousand years of your time in the future. It is terrible to wait, wait, wait and think of what may be happening in that other time. Is there nothing we can do to help? I know our hopeless ignorance of your science. Stel Felso Theu can scarcely understand the thoughts you use, and I can scarcely understand his explanations! I cannot help you there, with your calculations, but is there nothing I can do?"

  “There is, Ortolian, decidedly. We badly need your help, and as Stel Felso Theu cannot aid us here as much as he can by working with you, I will ask him to do so. I want your knowledge of psycho-mechanical devices to help us. Will you make a machine controlled by mental impulses? I want to see such a system and know how it is done that I may control machines by such a system."

  “Gladly. It will take time, for I am not the expert worker that you are, and I must make many pieces of apparatus, but I will do what I can,” exclaimed Zezdon Afthen eagerly.

  So, while Arcot and his group continued their work of determining the constants of the space-energy field, the others were working on the mental control apparatus.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XV

  ALL-POWERFUL GODS

  Again there was a period of intense labor, while the ship drifted through time, following Earth in its mad careening about the sun, and the sun as it rushed headlong through space. At the end of a thirty-day period, they had reached no definite position in their calculations, and the Talsonian reported, as a medium between the two parties of scientists, that the work of the Ortolian had not reached a level that would make a scientific understanding possible.

  As the ship needed no replenishing, they determined to finish their present work before landing, and it was nearly forty thousand years after their first arrival that they again landed on Earth.

  It was changed now; the ice caps had retreated visibly, the Nile delta was far longer, far more prominent, and cities showed on the Earth here and there.

  Greece, they decided would be the next stop, and to Greece they went, landing on a mountain side. Below was a village, a small village, a small thing of huts and hovels. But the villagers attacked, swarming up the hillside furiously, shouting and shrieking warnings of their terrible prowess to these men who came from the “shining house,” ordering them to flee from them and turn over their possession to them.

  “What'll we do?” asked Morey. He and Arcot had come out alone this time.

  “Take one of these fellows back with us, and question him. We had best get a more or less definite idea of what time-age we are in, hadn't we? We don't want to overshoot by a few centuries, you know!"

  The villagers were swarming up the side of the hill, armed with weapons of bronze and wood. The bronze implements of murder were rare, and evidently costly, for those that had them were obviously leaders, and better dressed than the others.

  “Hang it all, I have only a molecular pistol. Can't use that, it would be a plain massacre!” exclaimed Arcot.

  But suddenly several others, who had come up from one side, appeared from behind a rock. The scientists were wearing their power suits, and had them on at low power, leaving a weight of about fifty pounds. Morey, with his normal weight well over two hundred, jumped far to one side of a clumsy rush of a peasant, leaped back, and caught him from behind. Lifting the smaller man above his head, he hurled him at two others following. The three went down in a heap.

  Most of the men were about five feet tall, and rather lightly built. The “Greek God” had not yet materialized among them. They were probably poorly fed, and heavily worked. Only the leaders appeared to be in good physical condition, and the men could not develop to large stature. Arcot and Morey were giants among them, and with their greater skill, tremendous jumping ability, and far greater strength, easily overcame the few who had come by the side. One of the leaders was picked up, and trussed quickly in a rope a fellow had carried.

  “Look out,” called Wade from above. Suddenly he was standing beside them, having flown down on the power suit. “Caught your thoughts-rather Zezdon Afthen did.” He handed Arcot a ray pistol. The rest of the Greeks were near now, crying in amazement, and running more slowly. They didn't seem so anxious to attack. Arcot turned the ray pistol to one side.

  “Wait!” called Morey. A face peered fr
om around the rock toward which Arcot had aimed his pistol. It was that of a girl, about fifteen years old in appearance, but hard work had probably aged her face. Morey bent over, heaved on a small boulder, about two hundred pounds of rock, and rolled it free of the depression it rested in, then caught it on a molecular ray, hurled it up. Arcot turned his heat ray on it for an instant, and it was white hot. Then the molecular ray threw it over toward the great rock, and crushed it against it. Three children shrieked and ran out from the rock, scurrying down the hillside.

  The soldiers had stopped. They looked at Morey. Then they looked at the great rock, three hundred yards from him. They looked at the rock fragments.

  “They think you threw it,” grinned Arcot.

  “What else-they saw me pick it up, saw me roll it, and it flew. What else could they think?"

  Arcot's heat ray hissed out, and the rocks sputtered and cracked, then glowed white. There was a dull explosion, and chips of rock flew up. Water, imprisoned, had been turned into steam. In a moment the whistle and crackle of combined heat and molecular rays stabbing out from Arcot's hands had built a barrier of fused rocks.

  Leisurely Arcot and Morey carried their now revived prisoner back to the ship, while Wade flew ahead to open the locks.

  Half an hour later the prisoner was discharged, much to his surprise, and the ship rose. They had been able to learn nothing from him. Even the Greek Gods, Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, all the later Greek gods, were unknown, or so greatly changed that Arcot could not recognize them.

  “Well,” he said at length, “it seems all we know is that they came before any historical Greeks we know of. That puts them back quite a bit, but I don't know how far. Shall we go see the Egyptians?"

  They tried Egypt, a few moments across the Mediterranean, landing close to the mouth of the Nile. The people of a village near by immediately set out after them. Better prepared this time, Arcot flew out to meet them with Zezdon Afthen and Stel Felso Theu. Surely, he felt, the sight of the strange men would be no more terrifying than the ship or the men flying. And that did not seem to deter their attack. Apparently the proverb that “Discretion is the better part of valor,” had not been invented.

  Arcot landed near the head of the column, and cut off two or three men from the rest with the aid of his ray pistol. Zezdon Afthen quickly searched his mind, and with Arcot's aid they determined he did not know any of the Gods that Arcot suggested.

  Finally they had to return to the ship, disappointed. They had had the slight satisfaction of finding that the Sun God was Ralz, the later Egyptian Ra might well have been an evolved form of that name.

  They restocked the ship, fresh game and fruits again appearing on the menu, then once again they launched forth into space to wait for their own time.

  “It seems to me that we must have produced some effect by our visit,” said Arcot, shaking his head solemnly.

  “We did, Arcot,” replied Morey softly. “We left an impress in history, an impress that still is, and an impress that affected countless thousands.

  “Meet the Egyptian Gods with their heads strange to Terrestrians, the Gods who fly through the air without wings, come from a shining house that flies, whose look, whose pointed finger melts the desert sands, and the moist soil!” he continued softly, nodding toward the Ortolian and the Talsonian.

  “Their ‘impossible’ Gods existed, and visited them. Indubitably some genius saw that here was a chance for fame and fortune and sold ‘charms’ against the ‘Gods.’ Result: we are carrying with us some of the oldest deities. Again, we did leave our imprint in history."

  “And,” cried Wade excitedly, “meet the great Hercules, who threw men about. I always knew that Morey was a brainless brute, but I never realized the marvelous divining powers of those Greeks so perfectly-now, the Incarnation of Dumb Power!” Dramatically Wade pointed to Morey, unable even now to refrain from some unnecessary comments.

  “All right, Mercury, the messenger of the Gods speaks. The little flaps on Wade's flying shoes must indeed have looked like the winged shoes of legend. Wade was Mercury, too brainless for anything but carrying the words of wisdom uttered by others.

  “And Arcot,” continued Morey, releasing Wade from his condescending stare, “is Jove, hurling the rockfusing, destroying thunderbolts!"

  “The Gods that my friends have been talking of,” explained Arcot to the curious Ortolians, “are legendary deities of Earth. I can see now that we did leave an imprint on history in the only way we could-as Gods, for surely no other explanation could have occurred to those men."

  The days passed swiftly in the ship, as their work approached completion. Finally, when the last of the equation of Time, artificial matter, and the most awful of their weapons, the unlimited Cosmic Power, had been calculated, they fell to the last stage of the work. The actual appliances were designed. Then the completed apparatus that the Ortolian and the Talsonian had been working on, was carefully investigated by the Terrestrial physicists, and its mechanism studied. Arcot had great plans for this, and now it was incorporated in their control apparatus.

  The one remaining problem was their exact location in time. Already their progress had brought them well up to the nineteenth century, but, as Morey sadly remarked, they couldn't tell what date, for they were sadly lacking in history. Had they known the real date, for instance, of the famous battle of Bull Run, they could have watched it in the telectroscope, and so determined their time. As it was, they knew only that it was one of the periods of the first half of the decade of 1860.

  “As historians, we're a bunch of first-class kitchen mechanics. Looks like we're due for another landing to locate the exact date,” agreed Arcot.

  “Why land now? Let's wait until we are nearer the time to which we belong, so we won't have to watch so carefully and so long,” suggested Wade.

  They argued this question for about two hundred years as a matter of fact. After that, it was academic anyway.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XVI

  HOME AGAIN

  They were getting very near their own time, Arcot felt. Indeed, they must already exist on Earth. “One thing that puzzles me,” he commented, “is what would happen if we were to go down now, and see ourselves."

  “Either we can't or we don't want to do it,” pointed out Morey, “because we didn't."

  “I think the answer is that nothing can exist two times at the same time-rate,” said Arcot. “As long as we were in a different time-rate we could exist at two times. When we tried to exist simultaneously, we could not, and we were forced to slip through time to a time wherein we either did not exist or wherein we had not yet been. Since we were nearer the time when we last existed in normal time, than we were to the time of our birth, we went to the time we left. I suspect that we will find we have just left Earth. Shall we investigate?"

  “Absolutely, Arcot, and here's hoping we didn't overshoot the mark by much.” As Morey intimated, had they gone much beyond the time they left Earth, they might find conditions very serious, indeed. But now they went at once toward Earth on the time control. As they neared, they looked anxiously for signs of the invasion. Arcot spotted the only evident signs, however; two large spheres, tiny points in appearance on the telectroscope screen, were circling Earth, one at about 1,000 miles, moving from east to west, the other about 1,200 miles moving from north to south.

  “It seems the enemy have retreated to space to do their fighting. I wonder how long we were away."

  As they swept down at a speed greater than light, they were invisible till Arcot slowed down near the atmosphere. Instantly half a dozen fast ships darted toward them, but the ship was very evidently unlike the Thessian ships, and no attack was made. First the occupants would have an opportunity to prove their friendliness.

  “Terrestrians Arcot, Morey and Wade reporting back from exploration in space, with two friends. All have been on Earth with us previously,” said Arcot into the radio vision apparatus.

  “Very well, Dr.
Arcot. You are going to New York or Vermont?” asked the Patrol commander.

  “Vermont."

  “Yes, Sir. I'll see that you aren't stopped again."

  And, thanks to the message thus sent ahead, they were not, and in less than half an hour they landed once more in Vermont, on the field from which they had started.

  The group of scientists who had been here on their last call had gone, which seemed natural enough to them, who had been working for three months in the interval of their trip, but to Dr. Arcot senior, as he saw them, it was a misfortune.

  “Now I never will get straight all you'll have ready, and I didn't expect you back till next week. The men have all gone back to their laboratories, since that permits of better work on the part of each, but we can call them here in half an hour. I'm sure they'll want to come. What did you learn, Son, or haven't you done any calculating on your data as yet?"

  “We learned plenty, and I feel quite sure that a hint of what we have would bring all those learning-hounds around us pretty quickly, Dad,” laughed Arcot junior, “and believe it or not, we've been calculating on this stuff for three months since we left yesterday!"

  “What!"

  “Yes, it's true! We were on our time field, and turned on the space control-and a Thessian ship picked that moment to run into us. We cut the ship in half as neatly as you please, but it threw us eighty thousand years into the past. We have been coasting through time on retarded rate while Earth caught up with itself, so to speak. In the meantime-three months in a day!

  “But don't call those men. Let them come to the appointment, while we do some work, and we have plenty of work to do, I assure you. We have a list of things to order from the standard supply houses, and I think you better get them for us, Dad.” Arcot's manner became serious now. “We haven't gotten our Government Expense Research Cards yet, and you have. Order the stuff, and get it out here, while we get ready for it. Honestly, I believe that a few ships such as this apparatus will permit, will be enough in themselves to do the job. It really is a pity that the other men didn't have the opportunity we had for crowding much work into little time!