Star Bright

by Mark Clifton

"I don't know all that happened. I've only been there a few times. It's not very interesting. Anyway," he finished, "the Brights finally disappeared."

  "I'd sure like to know where they went," Star sighed. It was a lonely sigh. I helplessly took her hand and gave my attention back to Robert.

  "I still don't quite understand," I said.

  He grabbed up some scissors, a piece of cellophane tape, a sheet of paper. Quickly he cut a strip, gave it a half twist, and taped it together. Then rapidly, on the Moebius Strip, he wrote: "Cave men, This men, That men, Mu Men, Atlantis Men, Egyptians, History Men, Us Now Men, Atom Men, Moon Men, Planet Men, Star Men -- "

  "There," he said. "That's all the room there is on the strip. I've written clear around it. Right after Star Men comes Cave Men. It's all one thing joined together. It isn't future, and it isn't past, either. It just plain is. Don't you see?"

  "I'd sure like to know how the Brights got off the strip," Star said wistfully.

  I had all I could take.

  "Look, kids," I pleaded. "I don't know whether this game's dangerous or not. Maybe you'll wind up in a lion's mouth, or something."

  "Oh, no, Daddy!" Star shrilled in glee. "We'd just TP ourselves right out of there."

  "But fast," Robert chortled in agreement.

  "Anyway, I've got to think it over," I said stubbornly. "I'm only a Tween, but, Star, I'm your daddy and you're just a little girl, so you have to mind me."

  "I always mind you," she said virtuously.

  "You do, eh?" I asked. "What about going off the block? Visiting the Greeks and Star Men isn't my idea of staying on the block."

  "But you didn't say that, Daddy. You said not to cross the street. And I never did cross the street. Did we, Robert? Did we?"

  "We didn't cross a single street, Mr. Holmes," he insisted.

  "My God!" said Jim, and he went on trying to light a cigarette.

  "All right, all right! No more leaving this time, then," I warned.

  "Wait!" It was a cry of anguish from Jim. He broke the cigarette in sudden frustration and threw it in an ashtray. "The museum, Pete," he pleaded. "Think of what it would mean. Pictures, specimens, voice recordings. And not only from historical places, but Star men, Pete. Star men! Wouldn't it be all right for them to go places they know are safe? I wouldn't ask them to tak risks, but -- "

  "No, Jim," I said regretfully. "It's your museum, but this is my daughter."

  "Sure," he breathed. "I guess I'd feel the same way."

  I turned to the youngsters.

  "Star, Robert," I said to them both, "I want your promise that you will not leave this time, until I let you. Now I couldn't punish you if you broke your promise, because I couldn't follow you. But I want your promise on your word of honor you won't leave this time."

  "We promise." They each held up a hand, as if swearing in court. "No more leaving this time."

  I let the kids go back outside into the yard. Jim and I looked at one another for a long while, breathing hard enough to have been running.

  "I'm sorry," I siad at last.

  "I know," he answered. "So am I. But I don't blame you. I simply forgot, for a moment, how much a daughter could mean to a man." He was silent, and then added, with the humorous quirk back at the corner of his lips, "I can just see myself reporting this interview to the museum."

  "You don't intend to, do you?" I asked, alarmed.

  "And get myself canned or laughed at? I'm not that stupid."

  * * * *

  September 10th

  Am I actually getting it? I had a flash for an instant. I was concentrating on Caesar's triumphal march into Rome. For the briefest of instants, there it was! I was standing on the roadway, watching. But, most peculiar, it was still a picture; I was the only thing moving. And then, just as abruptly, I lost it.

  Was it only a hallucination? Something brought about by intense concentration and wishful thinking?

  Now let's see. You visualize a cube. Then you ESP it a half twist and seal the edges together -- No, when it has the half twist there's only one surface. You seal that surface all around --

  Sometimes I think I have it. Sometimes I despair. If only I were a Bright instead of a Tween!

  * * * *

  October 23rd

  I don't see how I managed to make so much work of teleporting myself. It's the simplest thing in the world, no effort at all. Why, a child could do it! That sounds like a gag, considering that it was two children who showed me how, but I mean the whole thing is easy enough for almost any kid to learn. The problem is understanding the steps . . . no, not understanding, because I can't say I do, but working out the steps in the process.

  There's no danger, either. No wonder it felt like a still picture at first, for the speeding up is incredible. That bullet I got in the way of, for instance -- I was able to go and meet it and walk along beside it while it traveled through the air. To the men who were dueling, I must have been no more than an instantaneous streak of movement.

  That's why the youngsters laughed at the suggestion of danger. Even if they materialized right in the middle of an atomic blast, it is so slow by comparison that they could could TP right out again before they got hurt. The blast can't travel any faster than the speed of light, you see, while there is no limit to the speed of thought.

  But I still haven't given them permission to teleport themselves out of this time yet. I want to go over the ages pretty carefully before I do; I'm not taking any chances, even though I don't see how they could wind up in any trouble. Still, Robert claimed the Brights went from the future back into the beginning, which means they could be going through time and overtake any of the three of us, and one of them might be hostile --

  I feel like a louse, not taking Jim's cameras, specimen boxes and recorders along. But there's time for that. Plenty of time, once I get the feel of history without being encumbered by all that stuff to carry.

  Speaking of time and history -- what a rotten job historians have done! For instance:

  George III of England was neither crazy nor a moron. He wasn't a particularly nice guy, I'll admit -- I don't see how anybody could be with the amount of flattery I saw -- but he was the victim of empire expansion and the ferment of the Industrial Revolution. So were all the other European rulers at the time, though. He certainly did better than Louis of France. At least George kept his job and his head.

  On the other hand, John Wilkes Booth was definitely psychotic. He could have been cured if they'd had our methods of psychotherapy then, and Lincoln, of course, wouldn't have been assassinated. It was almost a compulsion to prevent the killing, but I didn't dare . . . God knows what effect it would have had on history. Strange thing, Lincoln look less surprised than anybody else when he was shot, sad, yes, and hurt emotionally at least as much as physically, yet you'd swear he was expecting it.

  Cheops was plenty worried about the number of slaves who died while the pyramid was being built. They weren't easy to replace. He gave them four hours off in the hottest part of the day, and I don't think any slaves in the country were fed or housed better.

  I never found any signs of Atlantis or Lemuria, just tales of lands far off -- a few hundred miles was a big distance then, remember -- that had sunk beneath the sea. With the Ancients' exaggerated notion of geography, a big island was the same as a continent. Some islands did disappear, naturally, drowning a few thousand villagers and herdsmen. That must have been the source of the legends.

  Columbus was a stubborn cuss. He was thinking of turning back when the sailors mutinied, which made him obstinate. I still can't see what was eating Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great -- it would have been a big help to know the languages, because their big campaigns started off more like vacation or exploration trips. Helen of Troy was attractive enough, considering, but she was just an excuse to fight.

  There were several attempts to federate the Indian tribes before the white man and the Five Nations, but going after wives and slaves ruined the movement every time.
I think they could have kept America if they had been united and, it goes without saying, knew the deal they were going to get. At any rate, they might have traded for weapons and tools and industrialized the country somewhat in the way the Japanese did. I admit this would certainly have been a different world if they had succeeded!

  One day I'll put it all in a comprehensive and corrected history of mankind, complete with photographs, and then let the "experts" argue themselves into nervous breakdowns over it.

  I didn't get very far into the future. Nowhere near the Star Men, or, for that matter, back to the beginning that Robert told us about. It's a matter of reasoning out the path and I'm not a Bright. I'll take Robert and Star along as guides, when and if.

  What I did see of the future wasn't so good, but it wasn't so bad, either. The real mess obviously doesn't happen until the Star Men show up very far ahead in history, if Robert is right, and I think he is. I can't guess what the trouble will be, but it must be something ghastly if they won't be able to get out of it even with the enormously advanced technology they'll have. Or maybe that's the answer. It's almost true of us now.

  * * * *

  November, Friday 14th

  The Howells have gone for a weekend trip and left Robert in my care. He's a good kid and no trouble. He and Star have kept their promise, but they're up to something else. I can sense it and that feeling of expectant dread is back with me.

  They've been secretive of late. I catch them concentrating intensely, sighing with vexation, and then breaking out into unexplained giggles.

  "Remember your promise," I warned Star while Robert was in the room.

  "We're not going to break it, Daddy," she answered seriously.

  They both chorused, "No more leaving this time."

  But they both broke into giggles!

  I'll have to watch them. What good it would do, I don't know. They're up to something, yet how can I stop them? Shut them in their rooms? Tan their hides?

  I wonder what someone else would recommend.

  * * * *

  Sunday night

  The kids are gone!

  I've been waiting an hour for them. I know they wouldn't stay away so long if they could get back. There must be something they've run into. Bright as they are, they're still children.

  I have some clues. They promised me they wouldn't go out of this present time. With all her mischievousness, Star has never broken a promise to me -- as her typically feminine mind interprets it, that is. So I know they are in our own time.

  On several occasions, Star has brought it up, wondering where the Old Ones, the Bright Ones, have gone -- how they got off the Moebius Strip.

  That's the clue. How can I get off the Moebius Strip and remain in the present?

  A cube won't do it. There we have a mere journey along the single surface. We have a line, we have a plane, we have a cube. And then we have a supercube -- a tesseract. That is the logical progression of mathematics. The Bright Ones must have pursued that line of reasoning.

  Now I've got to do the same, but without the advantage of being a Bright. Still, it's not the same as expecting a normally intelligent person to produce a work of genius. (Genius by our standards, of course, which I suppose Robert and Star would classify as Tween.) Anyone with a pretty fair I.Q. and proper education and training can follow a genius's logic, provided the steps are there and especially if it has a practical application. What he can't do is initiate and complete that structure of logic. I don't have to, either -- that was done for me by a pair of Brights and I "simply" have to apply their findings.

  Now let's see if I can.

  By reducing the present-past-future of man to a Moebius Strip, we have sheared away a dimension. It is a two-dimensional strip, because it has no depth. (Naturally, it would be impossible for a Moebius Strip to have depth; it only has one surface.)

  Reducing it to two dimensions makes it possible to travel anywhere you want to go on it via the third dimension. And you're in the third dimension when you enfold yourself in the twisted cube.

  Let's go a step higher, into one more dimension. In short, the tesseract. To get the equivalent of a Moebius Strip with depth, you have to go into the fourth dimension, which, it seems to me, is the only way the Bright Ones could get off this closed cycle of past-present-future-past. They must have reasoned that one more notch up the dimensions was all they needed. It is equally obvious that Star and Robert have followed the same line of reasoning; they wouldn't break their promise not to leave the present -- and getting off the Moebius Strip into another present would, in a sort of devious way, be keeping that promise.

  I'm putting all this speculation down for you, Jim Pietre, knowing first that you're a Tween like myself, and second that you're sure to have been doing a lot of thinking about what happened after I sent you the coin Star dropped. I'm hoping you can explain all this to Bill and Ruth Howell -- or enough, in any case, to let them understand the truth about their son Robert and my daughter Star, and where the children may have gone.

  I'm leaving these notes whre you will find them, when you and Bill and Ruth search the house and grounds for us. If you read this, it will be because I have failed in my search for the youngsters. There is also the possibility that I'll find them and that we won't be able to get back onto the Moebius Strip. Perhaps time has a different value there, or doesn't exist at all. What it's like off the Strip is anyone's guess.

  Bill and Ruth: I wish I might give you hope that I will bring Robert back to you. But all I can do is wish. It may be no more than wishing upon a star -- my Star.

  I'm trying now to take six cubes and fold them in on one another so that every angle is a right angle.

  It's not easy, but I can do it, using every bit of concentration I've learned from the kids. All right, I have the six cubes and I have every angle a right angle.

  Now if, in the folding, I ESP the tesseract a half twist around myself and --