by E. C. Tubb
When he turned back, the invaded machine was filled with writhing silvery vines.
“Oh, great,” Keaton said. “That’s all we need.”
CHAOS, by John Russell Fearn
For nearly two hours Nal Folan had been seated almost motionless, held in the grip of profound abstract reasoning. In this time only his right hand had moved, turning over the sheets of light durable metal foiling covered with a maze of figures and mathematical computations. He had been working alone in complete silence, a single living man in the midst of a towering array of scientific apparatus.
Finally he laid aside the last sheet of foiling, stretched muscular arms, and got to his feet. He was tall, young, and dressed in a brief toga-like costume, his legs and arms almost bare. Nal Folan was a perfect creature of his race. Product of a magnificent science built up through generations.
The timepiece on the far wall of the huge laboratory showed him it was still early in the evening. He nodded to himself, brushed the thick black hair from his forehead with his hand, and then hurried to the door. A short walk down a gleaming corridor and up a flight of emergency steps brought him to the immense flat roof which extended over the entire area of the laboratory. Save for a distant figure the square expanse was deserted.
But the distant figure was all Nal Folan wished to see. He smiled to himself and walked swiftly across the space, his soft-footed sandals making hardly any noise. Before he had covered more than half the distance however the figure turned and began to hurry towards him—a graceful girl in brief garments similar to his own, her black hair streaming to her shoulders.
“Nal,” she murmured, as they seized each other’s hands.
He did not answer for a moment. Gently he kissed her oval face, looked for a moment into the darkness of her eyes. Then putting his arm about her waist he walked with her to the high metal rail which entirely encircled the roof parapet
“I thought you’d forget,” she said, smiling up at him. “With so many other things on your mind.”
“It would take more than wave-mechanics to make me forget you, Mydia,” he answered. “You said you’d meet me around this time on the laboratory roof, and that’s enough for me. You didn’t have any difficulty in getting here, did you?”
“Not particularly. I used the stairway from the street.”
He nodded. “Good. As long as we remain up here on this roof we’re within bounds. But we can’t go down into the laboratory, of course. Visitors are not allowed—not even when they are as beautiful as you are. Old man Grifa would go crazy if he found the rule had been broken.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Over in the west the sun had vanished in the magenta and orange of the warm spring evening. The sky was pale blue and empty, a star or two winking here and there. No wind stirred. From this high eminence the young roan and woman had an uninterrupted view of the city, a metropolis wider than it was high, nowhere rising above three stories except in the case of this laboratory.
The buildings were all of white metal, incorrodible, gleaming now with the strings of lights in the windows. Faintly, drifting on the still air, came the hum of the mighty engines which controlled the aircraft, the radio-television systems, the atomic power-houses, and the climate.
“Not a bad city to live in,” Nal Folan commented at length, his elbows on the rail and his young, powerful body half stooped as he gazed towards the west.
“Atlantis?” The girl smiled. “It’s a wonderful city, Nal, and you know it. Yet even with our scientific perfection I suppose there is still a good deal to be learned. You and your wave-mechanics theory, for instance.”
Nal Folan meditated, his keen gray eyes shifting to the distant Sphinx and Pyramids just outside the city. The Sphinx was a recent creation, a gigantic idol of stone etched out by scientific engineers, a traditional god which the race still revered despite their immense grasp of scientific realities. The Pyramids were for a very different purpose. They housed the ashes of the city fathers who had at last come to the end of their three-centuries span.
“Just what,” the girl asked presently, “are you trying to do in the laboratory, Nal? You’ve only given me vague hints. It’s important, isn’t it?”
He straightened up and regarded her. “Important enough, yes. Grifa and the others are coming tomorrow morning to see my demonstration. If it is successful I may become the Third Physicist. After that, a few more years say, and then I’ll have the same position as Grifa himself. That’s worth striving for.”
“That I know,” Mydia said. “You’ve mentioned it many times. But it still doesn’t explain what you are doing. Please remember that I’m only a very commonplace machine-minder in the climatic powerhouse and—”
“Commonplace!” Nal caught her shoulders and shook her gently. “If beauty were commonplace, which it isn’t even in this city, you might be right. Certainly not otherwise. My work?” He seemed suddenly conscious of her question. “It is a method of proving that an electron-area is not limited to being merely a microscopic probability.”
Mydia looked at him solemnly, her pretty face troubled. Then she sighed. “It serves me right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked you. I don’t know the first thing about electron-areas.”
“Then why bother?” he asked, smiling. “I asked you to come here after your machine shift so that we could talk—not of mathematics and probabilities but about ourselves. You and me—our coming marriage—the things we intend to do.”
Mydia was silent, looking down at the city. Men and women were going back and forth. Silent vehicles skimmed up and down the broad avenues. To the east the emptiness of the sky was broken as an exploration flyer, detailed to seek out fresh lands for expansion, came down on the guiding radio-beam.
“You—haven’t changed your mind?” Nal whispered frowning.
The girl laughed. “Of course not! Can’t I be silent for a moment or two without you thinking that? I was just considering. It’s so safe now for us to be married, to have children, and not be afraid that they will be destroyed. It was so different in our grandparent’s time.”
Nal nodded, reminded of events of two generations ago, six hundred years. At that time the entire race had fled through the void from the fourth planet nearest the sun. Gigantic geological changes and the consequent evaporation of their normal air and oceans had driven them out to this safer world.
Now they could look upon the planet they had left and see the merciless corrosion of ferric oxide going on before their eyes. But here they were safe, established. In this one city, the only city so far on Earth, the third world, was encompassed the entire nucleus of the mighty race—twenty thousand of them.
“We have to expand, colonize, marry, intermarry—spread ourselves all over the world,” Nal murmured, repeating the words of Brada, their monarch. “That is right and as it should be. We are not upsetting anybody who normally belongs to this planet. Except for us it has no intelligent life.”
The twilight deepened. The girl moved slightly.
“Are we going home, Nal, or do you intend to spend more time in the laboratory?”
He seemed to make up his mind about something before he replied.
“Mydia, we share most of our joys and sorrows, don’t we?” he asked.
“All of them,” she answered, her eyes luminous.
“Then I’m going to show you what I’m up to,” he decided. “Be hanged to rules and regulations! They can’t say anything to me, anyway. I’m too important a research scientist for that. Come below and see for yourself.”
He caught her arm and she followed promptly across the roof and down the emergency staircase into the silent corridor, which led to the department in which he had been working. Normally the staff in the building had ceased work by this time. Only special research, such as Nal had been engaged upon, made it necessary to delay beyond that hour.
“We’re quite alone,” he said, as he ushered her into the gigantic hall-like room. “Come along.”
; He closed the door behind her and in wonderment she gazed about her upon the towering giants of instruments. Though she was accustomed to scientific equipment in her daily work as a machine-minder she had never before encountered such apparatus as here. Most of it was for research work, or the product thereof, and therefore not in general use but reserved exclusively for secret experiments.
Finally Nal stopped beside the bench at which he had been working. He gestured briefly to the metal foils with the mathematics thereon and waved to what seemed to be a highly polished ball standing on the summit of a glittering rod, its base firmly bolted to the metal flooring.
“That,” he said, “is the product of these figures.”
Mydia contemplated the object for a moment or two and then she looked vaguely disappointed.
“Not very—impressive, is it?”
Nal smiled. “It isn’t meant to be. In fact, the fewer gadgets there are around it, better. It connects to the switchboard here,” he nodded to it, “and this blue push-button controls it. The button is the power-feeder. The thing, itself is a converter globe, made to react directly on the etheric waves of matter.”
“How?” Mydia questioned, puzzled.
“Well, it—” Nal broke off in surprise as the visiphone buzzed suddenly. Puzzled, he pressed the switch that opened the audiophone. Simultaneously, a face remarkable for its massive strength and mature wisdom appeared on the screen.
“Oh, there you are, Nal.” The deep, genial voice of Grifa, the First Physicist of Atlantis, came over the speakers. “I’d like you to come to my apartment for a few words. About your demonstration tomorrow.”
“Er—yes, sir.” Nal moved his hand behind his back so Mydia would understand to keep out of range of the instrument’s visual pickup. “I’ll be glad to, sir. Right away?”
“Yes. I won’t keep you long.”
Nal switched off and glanced ruefully at the girl. She breathed an expressive sigh of relief.
“Good job the old boy decided to ’phone instead of coming here personally,” she said.
“I’ll have to go.” Nal looked momentarily annoyed. “But I don’t expect I’ll be long. Then I’ll come back and finish what I was going to tell you. You don’t mind waiting?”
“Of course not. Even looking at this place passes the time.”
Folan nodded and strode quickly across the laboratory. Left to herself the girl stood gazing about her, and finally she returned to a study of the polished, harmless-looking globe. It still didn’t appear much of an achievement for eighteen months of concentrated effort. Her thoughts began to wander—playfully, then dangerously. The curiosity that is within every human being was getting the mastery. The blue button, Nal had said. To press it on and off surely couldn’t do any harm? It looked tempting.
She passed her fingertip gently over it, considered, and then she pressed it sharply on and off. Inside the metallic globe there was a faint whirring sound like blades spinning round in heavy air. Since the effect ceased the moment she released the button she tried again and jabbed the button inwards more sharply.
Then to her horror the button top slipped just under the socket edge and remained jammed!
Panic got her immediately. She fiddled and fumbled with her fingernails to get the button back into the central position, but it remained obdurate. Wildly she glanced about her for something thin and sharp. Above her the mystic metal globe had started to glow and the ghostly whirring had become a steady, constant sound.
A pair of forceps on the bench seemed the most likely thing. She dived for them and then stopped dead, stupefied. Suddenly her left arm had been painlessly, completely amputated from the elbow! The incredible horror of the fact paralyzed her for a moment. Then she turned her head to stare at the impartial, glowing globe.
Suddenly it was no longer a globe. It was a blazing sun and she was infinitely far out in space. There were a few seconds before the air inside her body exploded outwards in the pressure-free void, and then Mydia had literally blown apart a million miles from Earth.
Nal Folan found the First Physicist in his most genial mood in the big, quietly furnished apartment he occupied in the center of the city. Grifa himself was a tall, eagle-nosed man, white-haired now, but with all the strength of two hundred years. When Nal entered he was busy at his desk under the flood of cold light radiance in the glazed ceiling.
“Come in, Nal, sit down.” He motioned to a chair and then set aside his work and considered the young man across the desk. “I understand that you are ready to make yow demonstration tomorrow morning?”
“Of the electrical converter, yes,” Nal agreed. “I’ve worked it out to the last detail. I think it will fulfill all I’ve claimed for it—and thanks for giving me the time to finish it.”
“It is the purpose of us Elders of Atlantis to allow promising young scientists to develop their theories,” Grifa smiled. “Otherwise, how could science expand? However, I sent for you so that I can have all the details. I want to think the matter over before tomorrow.”
“I have everything recorded, sir. I’ll go and—”
Grifa raised a hand as Nal half rose. “Sit down, boy. Never mind the actual technique—just give me the outlines. That will be all I’ll need for the moment. I haven’t even the vaguest outline of your plan, yet, remember.”
“Well, sir, I’m seeking to prove that it is possible to study the exact position of an electron, instead of the present annoying condition wherein you can’t know the position and velocity of an electron simultaneously.”
“In other words you have devised a means whereby the basis of all matter can be studied without, say, the very action of light impact itself dislodging the electron before it can be studied?”
“I am dealing, sir, in probability,” Nal said quietly. “An electron, as we understand it, is merely a probability. It is within a given area of waves of inconceivable smallness. We cannot say for certain that it is here or there. We assume the probability that it is.
“The waves in which an electron is assumed to exist veer off into space, maybe into other dimensions, which makes the job of pinning down the actual position of the electron itself all the more difficult.”
“Quite so,” Grifa conceded. “And what have you done about it?”
“I’ve devised a converter. It emits energy waves that are identical with those existing around the ‘probable’ position of the electron, at which point of course the waves are densest. Therefore, instead of a central core if tremendous energy which weakens as it travels—as all waves weaken as they travel from the source—I maintain the same energy strength for any distance.”
Grifa looked astonished for a moment. “What you really mean is that instead of the electron wave being infinitesimally small it can be made as large as—as you wish?”
“That is it exactly,” Nal agreed, “because the original energy is carried onwards and outwards from the core for any distance we wish. It means that instead of having to try and examine an electron in a microscopic area we can have an area of several feet, yards, miles, whatever we wish. It makes the study of an electron wave and the electron itself absolutely possible.”
The First Physicist was silent for a long time, brooding. Then he got to his feet and shook his gray head slowly.
“I don’t quite like it,” he muttered. “The electron-probability, Nal, is the basis of all known matter. It operates in its small area by natural laws and because of that matter remains stable. If the area be extended, it means that the particular piece of matter involved will lose its cohesion. It might even be transplanted! Did you stop to think of that?”
“I did,” Nal assented. “That is why 1 have devised a spring button instead of a normal switch. The particular matter I intend to treat tomorrow will only be exposed to the influence for a split second. Then we can study the result. Naturally, only split-second energy release can be used at first until we know what we are dealing with, otherwise we might unlock matter itself.”
&n
bsp; Grifa became silent again, gazing pensively out of the window. Then after a while he frowned and motioned Nal to his side.
“What do you make of that?” the First Physicist asked, pointing.
Nal studied the view of the lighted city, but it was only by degrees that he became conscious of something amiss with it. It looked as though a V-shaped wedge had blotted out one section of the lights with a darkness that was absolute. At the very apex of the wedge was a tiny glowing point.
Even as he tried to understand the mystery, something passed through the building in which Grifa and he were standing. It was a curious surging motion as though an immense wind had passed through solid matter and then subsided again.
“Great heavens,” Nal whispered suddenly, his eyes suddenly becoming round with alarm. “That point is approximately where the research laboratory is. Surely it isn’t possible that—Mydia!” he breathed. “But—but she couldn’t have—!”
“What in cosmos are you talking about?” Grifa snapped, seizing Nal’s arm tightly. “What’s wrong, boy? You’re not suggesting that something has happened to your converter, are you?”
“I—I don’t know. I hardly dare think—”
“What do you mean by ‘Mydia’? What has a woman to do with it?”
Nal turned suddenly. “I’ve got to find out, sir.”
He headed from the apartment with long strides and the savant followed him. When they reached the street they found it jammed with milling crowds, and from here the amazing V-fault across the city was more than ever obvious. The buildings within this segment had entirely vanished. Those on the fringes of it were neatly, flawlessly, bisected.
“Come on!” Grifa snapped, pushing his way through the men and women with Nal at his side. “There’s something devilishly wrong here.”
With the realization that they were taking a desperate risk they hurried to the outermost edge of the V-section, but once they passed into it they experienced no ill effects. There was solid ground, smooth as the face a black mirror, from which all traces of buildings and the people who had been within them had utterly disappeared.