Resolute, thanks to the whisky, they returned to the laboratory for the third time since the iron had vanished. They stood wide-eyed and baffled. The matrix was still empty, but by now not only the globe but the entire machine was glowing weirdly. The metallic variants were flaming with inexplicable colors and vibrations, while the crystalline keys had become blurred, ethereal, in outline. It was as though part of the apparatus had veered into another dimension.
“What the devil’s happened to it?” Enrod asked unsteadily — then all of a sudden he knew what had happened to it. It was as though somebody invisible started telling him, as though an omniscient being was pouring information into his dazed brain.
“It is because —” he started to say, but Coltham cut him short, clearly under the same influence. His pedantic voice boomed forth.
“Because we used basic iron! That’s it! The machine did the very thing I conjectured — only I said it jestingly. It analyzed down to the edge of nothing. It analyzed the iron down and down into its final atomic, sub-atomic, sub-subatomic constituents, down into its eternally locked core. And because iron is the basic factor of the universe as we know it, the material universe anyway, the machine had there a mass of equations forming the basis of universe-stuff. I can’t call it anything else.”
Coltham drew a deep breath, appalled by the possibilities.
“Only one thing can come out of it — a new mathematical setup entirely! The iron has been converted into mathematics by the very mathematics which make it up, even as some elements are converted into a new element because they give off radiations which, when striking a catalyst, change them into the nature of the catalyst. A mathematical catalyst. What a discovery!”
Enrod was not impressed. Silent, doubtful, he prowled round the glowing machine. In fact he and Coltham both did. They argued the thing back and forth for over an hour …
“Coltham, you blasted fool, you’ve put your foot in it this time,” Enrod cried, when his conclusions were complete. “In this infernal machine of yours you have spawned an equation or something which also probably existed when the universe began, out of which even the universe was possibly formed. Suppose this equation, or probability wave, or whatever it is, travels outward? Do you realize what might happen?”
“One could imagine it moving in a straight line, regardless of gravity,” Coltham theorized. “In such a case it would be unlikely to hit above six or seven people. It is law that a straight line, even driven through a mass, can only hit about six individual units straight on. The rest are hit diagonally. Hence the difficulty that is experienced in hitting atoms —”
“Confound your theories, man! Don’t you realize, that with the equation of iron in its makeup, this thing might attempt to wrest the mathematical setup of all iron? It could bring the world down round our ears! Everything has iron to some extent.”
Enrod broke off and mopped his face. “Heavens, this is getting too much for me! This globe is alive and I’m getting out.”
He swung for the door, but it was at that moment that the lambent, inexplicable fires in the globe seemed to build up into concrete form. A half material, half ethereal beam stabbed suddenly out of it, went right through the departing scientist and left a hole in him, flashed without a sound through the wall and left a perfect circle there, too.
Coltham twirled round, staring like a man face to face with Lucifer.
As for Enrod, his thoughts were suddenly beyond his control. This sudden change into a god was something he could not fathom, His brain reeled under an onslaught of crazy mathematical shufflings when the beam drove through him, a shuffling in which geometry and mathematics were interlocked. He realized he was in the grip of a mad probability, which at any second might yield to another probability and snuff him out of existence.
For a brief instant space seemed to roll out in front of his mental vision—time, space, matter and energy were there in complete mathematical unity, and he understood it! That was the odd thing. The probability changed, and with it all consciousness of his mortal entity. He winged, uncontrollably, through infinity — fell into a blank void.
Coltham, behind the machine, failed to get that ray — but he realized the danger the instant he saw Enrod fall with half his body cleanly removed. Whirling around, he snatched up the nearest chair and hurled it into the midst of the mathematical monster — and in so doing sealed his own doom.
The globe exploded and the beam vanished, though it had doubtless done plenty in its few moments of life. The mystical spawned equations seized on everything metallic around them, seized on everything that had an iron content, and that included Coltham. To his dazed eyes the walls and machinery turned pale blue under the invisible influence. He tripped and staggered, was caught up in the mad metamorphosis.
For him the mathematical probability-wave had of course a totally different position in space and time, hence his consciousness was briefly thrust into a setup different from that of Enrod. He was amidst gigantic palms and fat-boled trees, moving under a sky leaden with scudding, steamy clouds. Here and there flashed a strange bird — a pterodactyl, perhaps. He had slipped somehow into the early days of Earth!
The mathematical probability changed again as it tried to take from him the basic iron equations it needed. In consequence, Coltham’s consciousness reeled in the opposite direction, the unknowably distant future.
Here, cities climbed into the skies, stood proud and herculean by the shores of an unknown sea of pure blue. There were people basking in the golden sunshine. Sand sparkled with the whiteness of salt. It was a vision of transcendent loveliness that whizzed and vanished like a lightning flash through Coltham’s mind.
As it had been for Enrod, so it was for Coltham. His body was no longer with him. Even his consciousness was failing. He was the helpless tool of mathematical probability that was solely concerned with using his basic iron mathematics and discarding the rest. Somehow, the mathematics had to strike a balanced whole and so form into a complete unit, just as atoms, systems, and universes must balance.
Enrod and Coltham were gone, but the original beam from the globe, the richer for the equations it had derived, flashed on in a straight line at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees …
The devotees of Joseph Barlow never saw it coming. The big fellow had just turned toward the door in the corner of the huge boardroom when the hurtling straight-line ascension of Professor Coltham’s equational beam arrived. To the industrialist’s Yes-men it was the most amazing sight.
The corner of the room where Barlow was standing suddenly glowed with a magnificent display of spectrum colors. It was as though rainbows were interwoven with each other as those unfathomable transfigurations sought for the iron in their path.
Across a corner of the costly carpet, on the paneled rectangle forming the doorway and side wall loomed, in truth, the beginning and end of all mathematics — so brief, so overwhelming, it had gone before the Yes-men could grasp it. Gone indeed! The beam swept with it a great corner of the building, clean cut as though with a knife.
Barlow, stunned and incredulous, actually spun like a top in a luminescent haze. All thoughts of becoming senator, of altering the basic construction of the Grayham Dam, had gone right out of his mind. Instead he was permitted a view of himself as a mathematical integration fitting flawlessly into the pattern of the universe.
It only lasted a few seconds maybe, then he was conscious of himself again, hurtling away over New York’s streets at a speed beyond comprehension. He marveled that he did not need to breathe or count his heartbeats!
Ahead of him he saw a vastly looming apartment building, then came a strange overwhelming pressure and for him the universe burst into myriad points of light …
*
Secretary Mason stood staring at Withers’ gun as it leveled at him. He knew his life was forfeit and he was prepared to die — but instead he was treated to the most unexpected vision.
It was so incredible that he wondered, for a mom
ent, if he were not already dead. There seemed to be no other way of accounting for this.
There were three J. Clayton Withers’! Each one identical even to the clothing and the gun. Yet they were not in any way reversed as though mirrors were responsible.
Mason blinked, and at the same moment the most astounded expression settled on the tycoon’s face. He caught sight of hit two images, dropped his gun — and they did likewise! There were three separate and distinct thuds on the carpet.
“What the devil!” three mouths shouted. Then J. Clayton Withers became conscious of the impossible. He was in three places simultaneously, and even more extraordinary was the fact that he was able to think, for a split second or so only, in three different brains at once, and keep each one distinct. He had been going to kill a man — he had unraveled the cosmic calculus — he could see into a future time — all at once!
Then the terrific tension gave way. He fell to the floor, utterly paralyzed, and at the same instant his twins vanished. But his body, before Mason’s eyes, split into a myriad microscopic images of J. Clayton Withers and went hurtling toward the outer wall of the room. Clean through it — matter through matter! Then whatever it was had gone and the room was silent.
Mason felt life surge back to him. He gave one mighty scream and fled for the door. Tearing it open, he went down the corridor shouting with a hysteria that bordered on insanity …
Fanny Reardon arrived at Logan’s Auto Dump on time to find Nick Blake impatiently awaiting her. Within ten minutes they were both in the plane, climbing rapidly over Long Island in the first lap of their trip to Florida.
“You got sense, kid,” Nick Blake murmured, glancing at her as she sat beside him with her fur coat up to her chin. “We can skip to Florida until the heat’s off. Don’t forget that we’re absolutely safe. Boyd Amos will take the rap for this lot, believe you me. Then we can celebrate right.”
“Not we — me!” Fanny Reardon retorted. She turned suddenly as she spoke, her painted face grimly determined. Blake glanced down and started slightly at the sight of the automatic in her hand.
“What’s the idea?” he snapped. “Don’t forget that I’m flying this plane: If you try anything funny, it’ll be too bad for us both!”
“You’re not the only person who can pilot a plane, Nick! My main thought at the moment is that you’re carrying two hundred thousand dollars, and that money can be mighty useful to me. I’ve had enough of you, Nick. You’re a cheap, no-account murderer, and a girl’s got to look to her future. If you drop in the Atlantic from twenty thousand feet up it won’t improve your appearance. Any way you’ll be dead by then — I’ll see to that. Who’s to know how you got in the sea?”
Blake laughed uneasily. “Quit clowning, can’t you? You and me are too close for you to have such ideas.”
He stopped as the gun stuck in his ribs.
“I want that money, Nick. Hand it out!”
Because he knew Fanny Reardon well he slowly pulled out his wallet, retaining control with his free hand.
“Serves me right for trusting a cheap dame,” he sneered. “Here you — are!” He slammed up his wallet hand furiously on the last word but he missed for the simple reason that Fanny was expecting his move and had jerked her head back sharply. Her gun fired three times to make sure. Not a flicker of emotion passed over her painted features as Blake fell over the controls.
In a moment she had bundled his body onto the floor, righted the plane, then felt with her free hand through the wallet he had dropped. Her fingers ploughed gleefully through the bills.
“Another mile and I can drop him,” she mused, staring through the window. “Let’s see. I’m over Long Island, three thousand feet up.”
She glanced about her, puzzled. There was a pale blue light outside the observation window, even inside the cabin itself. It was as though a blue searchlight had turned on somewheres.
“What is this?” she whispered, her lips suddenly dry.
As she turned in her seat she realized that for once in her hard-boiled life she was frightened. The dead body of Nick Blake was glowing, even through his clothes. Even the blood in the cabin floor flamed like phosphorous! Fanny just sat there, stunned, hardly conscious of the plane’s wild lungings.
“You’re a ghost!” she breathed, her eyes starting. “Mebbe there ain’t such things, but you’re one! Don’t you dare touch me!”
Suddenly Nick Blake was no longer there. Fanny had no idea what happened to him. It seemed as though his corpse turned into a swirl of gas, and twisted like a cyclone. Then it disappeared.
She gulped, corrected the plane, stared outside. Something was wrong out there. A moment ago she had been heading over Long Island. Now there were little points of light all about her.
Stars! Stars by the million! And a beam cleaving toward them!
And even as she realized it her breath froze solid on the window. A cold such as she had never known bit through her fur coat into her very marrow. The motors went dead. Air had vanished.
Her mind, utterly untrained to science, grappled helplessly with this sudden retribution. Those stars meant nothing. Otherwise she would have known that the equational beam was streaking through the autumn night towards Pleiades, across the center of the Milky Way, slightly south of Procyon, and across the upper half of the bent rectangle of the star group Monoceros. Nor could she guess that pin-pointed in the angle of these groups, a space ship hovered.
She got to her feet, turned a slow somersault and, demoralized with terror, found herself upside down. Gravity had gone. What attraction remained was in the center of the cabin.
Air was vanishing fast. There were icicles round the airlock door where the void was sucking it out.
Fanny Reardon kicked savagely and turned right way up again. She clutched the window and stared out. There was still blueness everywhere, bathing the whole plane, coming from a source, way below behind Long Island somewhere. This was impossible, utterly ridiculous. Now that she came to look there was no Long Island — in fact, nothing recognizable at all.
Suddenly she screamed as she felt something like a white-hot shuttle hurtle back and forth through her body. At the same instant the plane vanished, its iron makeup converted. Fanny’s body followed it but a brief second later. For two seconds of time the cheap, unscrupulous chorine was a goddess, able to fathom all time, space, and infinity. Then the iron in her makeup was resolved into its mathematical necessities and her entity ceased to be …
Dath Rasor looked up, with a start, from the space-mirror and sought the insectile faces of his comrades. Though they could not register much expression there was no denying their uneasiness.
“What has happened to that third world?” Rasor demanded. “Just look at it! Shattered by a V-shaped scar! Inexplicable chaos appears to be reigning. How strange! How annoying! Just when we had made all our preparations!”
He paused and turned as an alarm bell rang throughout the ship. Tue master pilot turned instantly to his instruments and gave a cry of alarm.
“Master, something has been projected from that third world! It seems to be —” the flutish voice was incredulous — “a ball of — of mathematical probabilities!”
“A what?” Dath Rasor stared. Then his tone grew sharp. “Where is it now?”
“About three million miles distant. Fortunately it is not in our direct path. We can observe it.”
Immediately the scientists all turned to the scanning screens and watched in thoughtful silence as the incredibly fast ball of blue fled past them at the speed of light. Never had they seen so perfect a circle. It was flawless …
The scanning screens adjusted themselves automatically, kept the enigma in perfect focus as it fled towards the furthermost reaches of the cosmos. As it went, its speed increased even beyond that of light, seeming to show that it had no ordinary laws to govern it. The fact was doubly proved since the light waves from it were still visible, marking its course. In every way it defied understanding.
<
br /> It passed through immense gravitational fields without any sign of divergence. It went through the core of the hottest stars, and only revealed that it had a sentient intelligence when it started to slow down. Nothing but intelligence could account for its stopping as there were no gravitational fields in the island emptiness where it finally elected to halt.
The Centaurian scientists looked at each other in amazement, and waited.
To gaze on the thing — about the size of Earth’s moon — was to become conscious of things beyond imagination. Even to the highly sensitive minds of the superscientists it was suggestive of something supernal, of seeing the beginning and end of all space and time. Strange, puzzling thoughts passed through their minds — and faded.
Was it a world? A sun? Nothing was certain about it. It had no gravitation. It had no heat. Nor, according to the instruments, had it any light. And yet it could be seen.
Nothing of the scientists’ devising, masters of the cosmos though they were, could get the slightest reaction out of the Thing. It was the greatest X in their vast experience. And to come up against the unknown in these primitive parts of the Cosmos was a severe setback to Dath Rasor.
He turned back suddenly to the instruments and went to work with grim vigor, ordering the ship to be halted so he could have absolute steadiness. He was clearly bewildered when at last his studies were at an end.
“I do not understand,” he breathed. “‘Out there is something that obviously started as a basic mathematical probability, has expanded outward with immense velocity and converted everything in its path into fresh mathematical balances — until now we see a complete whole, a perfect sublime unity of figures living on itself, within itself. An alien, thinking world in a universe of coarse matter and energy. It gives off energy, but absorbs none. It is the unknown quantity.
“I do not know what gave it birth. Maybe it sprang from some basic universal equation. Only centuries of evolution, even by us, would be able to explain it.”
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 31