The ion spray leaped against my porthole with a gleam like St. Elmo’s fire. I saw the crests of great white billows rushing, and they were nebulae. The wind howled in the eternal void; I felt the battering and straining of my hull-plates; lightning went flashing past; and we were caught in the grip of a terrific current. I gripped the shivering controls with my great hands and laughed. Ah, ah, the thin sails and the lightning wrack, and the dragon boat upon the trackless sea! And so, with controls locked in both fists and my eyes ahead, in the grip of an electronic current which went rushing toward a notch ahead, I shot toward the dimensionless point where space and time come to an end in nothingness, and reverse in minus quantity.
There is this about space and time (explained Gunderson, making a gesture carefully with his great heavy hands), they are shaped like a pair of inverted cones, lying point to point. Like an hourglass, roughly, let us say, or like the torso of a woman in a cubistic dream. They are not illimitable and all plus, as the astronomers think, with distance piled on distance, and time on time. Nor are they curved, like the inside of an egg, returning on themselves in a parabola, according to the concept of the mathematicians.
In whatever direction a man goes, they narrow to a point at the end of the cone, and beyond that there is an inverted cone of minus space and minus time, and the stars rotate from east to west, and time moves backward from its end to its beginning, and all vacuums are solid, and there is a dark light. You understand. That is the secret of eternity. Once explained, it is quite obvious, and even a child could grasp it. Whereas—that is, upon this earth—within this cone of plus and forward, of west-to-east and outside-out, time moves forward from the past into the future, and dimensions move outward from the center into the infinite; beyond the end of the cone it is all just the other way. That is the reason for the stars which seem millions of light-years away.
They are old and are going backward to their beginnings, and by the measure of their seeming distance they are near. It is an obvious and a simple thing, yet there is no man who has understood this before me. I passed this point; I shot forward into minus space and minus time. The speed went out of my ship with geometric deceleration, in ratio as it had gathered. I landed on the other earth, which is called Threa.
There is only one other earth (said Gunderson), and from here to there is the distance from plus to minus and no more. It is an earth that once was old and now is growing young. The people there are like frozen flame. There I met Mara.
(He paused, Gunderson.) She was like nothing ever dreamed of, a soul of light, a body of fire. Growing younger and lovelier hour by hour. What is there to say of her that you could understand? All that men upon this earth do not yet know. Behind her the million years of the race’s future, of wisdom, beauty, and love. Ahead of her the simplicity, the loveliness of the child. With her I dreamed the golden years away.
With her (he said), with Mara, and with the seven strong sons she bore me! Those sons which upon this earth I shall never have. I can see them yet; I can feel their arms about my neck; I can hear their valiant young voices shouting and laughing even now in my ear, running about at their play—Loar, Lrac, Cire, Feil, Zral, Rednug, and Ollor, my sons! My strong Viking sons of flame, upon that earth, with Mara! I can hear them calling yet! The golden years going backward into youth! Life, love, peace, strength, and beauty! Threa, the other earth! Beyond the cone. Within the reverse of the future. Ah, Mara! I lived with her fourteen years on Threa. My eldest son was just thirteen, the littlest one was toddling at my knee.
But you would not understand. What is there to say? One day she took me with her to look through the telescope, which looks into the future, which is their past. I turned it on the earth. I saw Nivea in the arms of Hartley, beside the cradle where their youngest child lay. I got into my ship, and I came back . . .
I shot back through minus space and minus time, and the years I had spent had been less than nothing, and through the telescope which I had mounted on my bow I watched the years upon the earth roll back like a swift film, as I sped toward it, swifter than light.
I was entering the galaxy when I saw them laughing, drinking in the bedchamber, and it was but the morning of tomorrow. I was passing the Pleiades when I saw them at the bedroom door, and—as I sped toward them— going backward from it, and backward outward from the house, and it was but the evening of today. I was making the swift turn into the drift, and they were at dinner together, saluting each other over their highballs’ rims with hot and fusing eyes.
And as I shot onward, through the hours, they went backward, backward, back through the afternoon and back through lunch, and back into the morning. And then there was dawn light around me, and the small blue sun was there ahead, and I was passing past Neptune, and I was in the orbit once again. And they were back there by the Sound’s shore; they were back there on the high platform beside the great empty cradle of my rocket, still watching, clasped in each other’s arms, with their eyes focused on me while I shot off into space. Still watching, with the greed and hope and old evil treacherous lust within their faces; she with her warm look beside him that had never warmed for me, he with his sly fat lips and greasy, greedy eyes. They were there, watching me far off, and in an instant more the wind of my departure was blowing in their faces, and they were bent with their arms across their eyes.
I landed, and they were standing there, just waving me good-by through the porthole, and Nivea shouting some word that I could not hear. And the golden, golden years had rolled backward and away, and plus and minus together added had become a sum of nothingness.
I took the wrench and undid the hatch’s lugs and I rose up through the hatch door, tired, tired . . .
“Don’t forget to come back, Helver, darling!” said Nivea.
But there was a blank unearthly terror in her eyes, as if she had suddenly awakened from a dream that had rolled away.
“I haven’t,” I said, “my darling.”
“You haven’t forgotten your wrench, have you, old man?” said Hartley.
“Nor that!” I said.
And his face, too, as fixed with terror, as if he, too, had dreamed a dream.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he said.
I got out upon the platform. With my red, red eyes and my great hands. Oh, she was beginning to moan softly with terror then, deep in her white throat. And Hartley’s knees were like jelly beneath him, and his breath was wheezing up his windpipe, and the veins throbbed on his great smooth thin-haired skull, and the dawn wind blew cold, and high up there, and his face was a green and moldy paste. The whole scene was some insanity of anger I had dreamed in that other world . . .
“I’ve been,” I said. “I came back.”
“Don’t! Don’t!” he screamed. “In God’s name, Helver!”
He backed toward the edge of the high platform, with his arms swinging and the terror in his face. But I lifted the wrench in my great hand, and I crushed in his eggshell skull with it. I crushed it in, like rotten pulp, the greatest brain that ever lived, with one great swinging blow upon it, and he was dead with the awful horror on his face before he crashed backward through the platform railing and fell to the ground far, far below.
And Nivea was screaming; she was screaming, upon her knees there at my feet. She had always loved me, she was screaming to me. She would bear me sons; she would forever love me; she would always be true. But I strangled her with my two hands, and with her golden hair about her soft white throat.
What day is this? May 7, 1968? Yes, yes, that is right. The golden years that have rolled away. It is six o’clock in the morning. That is Dr. Hooker Hartley, the eminent physicist, gentlemen, lying there. That is Nivea, my wife . . .
(He paused, Gunderson, rubbing his red eyes with his hands.)
“Take him away!” said the police sergeant grimly. “He is utterly insane!” But Gunderson did not hear the grim-faced trooper in blue. Still in his ears was the great roaring of the spheres. He was still thinking of t
he woman of flame.
CHAPTER FIVE
Report of Sergeant J. K. Billings, Flying Troop G, Connecticut State Police, May 7, 1968:
While flying on traffic patrol Skyway 1A, between Bridgeport and Norwalk, at altitude 1000 feet, today at 6:00 A.M., Sergeant Billings observed a large crowd of several hundred men on the ground in front of the Gunderson Plant, Engineering Three, on the shore between Bridgeport and Fairfield, and a high towerlike structure built of new planking, on which there rested, in a cradle, a large torpedo-shaped device of blue and silver.
Looking down, Billings observed three figures, two men and a woman, on a platform at the top of the tower beside the torpedo-shaped device, which apparently was undergoing some kind of a christening ceremony. As Billings cut his skyway pavement from beneath him and spiraled down, he saw one of the men get into the hatchway of the torpedo and close down the lid.
A cloud passed over the sun in that instant. Or at least for the instant, as near as Billings can describe it, he was struck with an attack of vertigo and a momentary lapse of the time sense. He had a feeling as if a streak of gray and invisible lightning had shot up from the earth and in the same instant as if it had shot back again.
He wishes to mention this in reference to his request for sick leave with pay which has lain untouched on the lieutenant’s desk for the past month, as proof that the complaint of overwork, which he therein respectfully alleges, was not just a stall, but medically sound and legitimate, and someday he will faint in the air maybe in spite of looking so healthy, unless he is allowed said leave, and then where would he be?
Anyway, this time fortunately Billings’ attack of vertigo was of short duration, lasting approximately one hundredth of a second, as near as he could estimate, or about the time of two lightning streaks. He shook his head, and his vision cleared. Looking down, he saw the man who had climbed into the torpedo climbing out of it again, with a wrench in his hand, and suddenly attack the other man upon the platform. Forcing said victim of his assault to the edge of the platform, he struck him on the head with violent force, causing said victim to fall off. Immediately he attacked the woman, who was fighting and screaming for her life.
The crowd of mechanics were swarming up the stairs to the platform. Billings spiraled down to a landing. He mounted to the platform, and found the mechanics already there surrounding the attacker.
This man identified himself, and was identified by them, as Helver Gunderson, the millionaire inventor. Gunderson was crouched on the floor of the platform beside the body of the woman, who was identified as his wife, and at Billings’ demand he made a long and rambling statement in which there was no sense, except a confession that he had attacked and killed Dr. Hooker Hartley and likewise said wife of his.
To an inquiry as to whether he regretted his act he did not reply. Billings took Gunderson into custody with the help of a squad of troopers who had been summoned.
From various witnesses, whose names are appended, Billings obtained the following general information. That Mr. Gunderson had shown some signs of mental strain and aberration for the past number of months, working on the production of a device whose purpose they did not know, and which he kept to himself with more than usual taciturnity. That this morning Dr. Hartley, who had been summoned by Mr. Gunderson, together with Mrs. Gunderson, to come down to the plant, as the work was finished, informed various of the employees privately that Gunderson had delusions that he had made a space-rocket, and was afraid for his sanity.
He was merely going through with it, said Dr. Hartley, to humor Gunderson.
Moreover, while on the platform at the purported launching of the ship, Dr. Hartley was seen to make various gestures behind Gunderson’s back whenever he had the opportunity, such as tapping his skull, spinning his hand around beside his ear, winking to the men below, and so on, emphasizing his sad conviction that Gunderson was insane. The men said that Mrs. Gunderson, likewise, seemed convinced of her husband’s insanity, and was laughing constantly and hysterically almost all through the performance. However, she did not care for her husband, having been in love with Hartley for many years.
“And he couldn’t have been so dumb as not to know it himself, either, the old Swede,” said J. Koliawsky, superintendent of construction, whose address for further questioning is appended. “He just pulled this bug act to get away with it. There wasn’t anything ever to that machine, and he knew it. Lots of times while we’ve been working on it I’ve heard him stop and chuckle to himself, ‘The greatest brain that ever lived!’ and things like that.”
The question as to whether Gunderson deliberately plotted and carefully planned an alibi of insanity, preliminary to murdering Dr. Hartley and Mrs. Gunderson, as Koliawsky intimates, is for the courts to determine.
It is the opinion of Sergeant Billings, however, that he is as bughouse as they come. He was whimpering and weeping for someone called Mara when we took him away, and talking about his sons, when the men tell me he is childless, and no one to inherit all his money.
Billings set a guard over the rocket before taking Gunderson away. The men insisted that they had hauled it out of the shop only this dawn, new and fresh with paint. But they must be wrong in that, since its paint, Billings observed, had an old weathered look as if it had been exposed to the elements for many years, and there were streaks upon it of a grayish powder which burned Billings when he touched them.
When Gunderson was asked as to what they were, in the hope that he might be induced to make some final and more coherent statement, he only said that they were star dust, and the spume of the Milky Way. Billings therefore reiterates his belief, as an officer of old experience, that Gunderson is crazy.
In view of the attack of vertigo and the simultaneous gray lightning flashes going and coming, which Billings was subjected to, he respectfully repeats his request for leave, for otherwise he feels that some of the rambling and incoherent things which Gunderson told to him this morning might start him off, too, looking for this land called Threa.
Copyright 1938 by Frank A. Munsey Company.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE MARTIAN CROWN JEWELS
by Poul Anderson
The signal was picked up when the ship was still a quarter-million miles away, and recorded voices summoned the technicians. There was no haste, for the ZX28749, otherwise called the Jane Brackney, was right on schedule; but landing an unmanned spaceship is always a delicate operation. Men and machines prepared to receive her as she came down, but the control crew had the first order of business.
Yamagata, Steinmann, and Ramanowitz were in the GCA tower, with Hollyday standing by for an emergency. If the circuits should fail—they never had, but a thousand tons of cargo and nuclear-powered vessel crashing into the port could empty Phobos of human life. So Hollyday watched over a set of spare assemblies, ready to plug in whatever might be required.
Yamagata’s thin fingers danced over the radar dials. His eyes were intent on the screen. “Got her,” he said. Steinmann made a distance reading, and Ramanowitz took the velocity off the Dopplerscope. A brief session with a computer showed the figures to be almost exactly as predicted.
“Might as well relax,” said Yamagata, taking out a cigarette. “She won’t be in control range for a while yet.”
His eyes roved over the crowded room and out its window. From the tower he had a view of the spaceport: unimpressive, most of its shops and sheds and living quarters being underground. The smooth concrete field was chopped off by the curvature of the tiny satellite. It always faced Mars, and the station was on the far side, but he could remember how the planet hung enormous over the opposite hemisphere, soft ruddy disk, blurred with thin air, hazy greenish-brown mottlings of heath and farmland. Though Phobos was clothed in vacuum, you couldn’t see the hard stars of space—the sun and the floodlamps were too bright.
There was a knock on the door. Hollyday went over, almost drifting in the ghostly gravity, and opened it. “N
obody allowed in here during a landing,” he said. Hollyday was a stocky blond man with a pleasant, open countenance, and his tone was less peremptory than his words.
“Police.” The newcomer, muscular, round-faced, and earnest, was in plain clothes, tunic and pajama pants, which was expected; everyone in the tiny settlement knew Inspector Gregg. But he was packing a gun, which was not usual, and looked harried.
Yamagata peered out again and saw the port’s four constables down on the field in official space suits, watching the ground crew. They carried weapons. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing . . . I hope.” Gregg came in and tried to smile. “But the Jane has a very unusual cargo this trip.”
“Hm?” Ramanowitz’s eyes lit up in his broad, plump visage. “Why weren’t we told?”
“That was deliberate. Secrecy. The Martian crown jewels are aboard.” Gregg fumbled a cigarette from his tunic.
Hollyday and Steinmann nodded at each other. Yamagata whistled. “On a robot ship?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. A robot ship is the one form of transportation from which they could not be stolen. There were three attempts made when they went to Earth on a regular liner, and I hate to think how many while they were at the British Museum. One guard lost his life. Now my boys are going to remove them before anyone else touches that ship and scoot ’em right down to Sabaeus.”
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