“I’ve had enough,” Groves said. “All I want now is to go back to Terra.”
“Where are we?” Siller demanded, for the tenth time. “Doc, you know. Tell me, damn it! All three of you know. Why won’t you say?”
“Because we want to keep our sanity,” Basset said, his teeth clenched. “That’s why.”
“I’d sure like to know,” Siller murmured. “If we went over in the corner would you tell me?”
Basset shook his head. “Don’t bother me, Major.”
“It just can’t be,” Groves said. “How could it be?”
“And if we leave, we’ll never know. We’ll never be sure. It’ll haunt us all our lives. Were we really—here? Does this place really exist? And is this place really—”
“There was a second place,” Carmichel said abruptly.
“A second place?”
“In the story. A place where the people were big.”
Basset nodded. “Yes. It was called—What?”
“Brobdingnag.”
“Brobdingnag. Maybe it exists, too.”
“Then you really think this is—”
“Doesn’t it fit his description?” Basset waved toward the port. “Isn’t that what he described? Everything small, tiny soldiers, little walled cities, oxen, horses, knights, kings, pennants. Drawbridge. Moat. And their damn towers. Always building towers—and shooting arrows.”
“Doc,” Siller said. “Whose description?”
No answer.
“Could—could you whisper it to me?”
“I don’t see how it can be,” Carmichel said flatly. “I remember the book, of course. I read it when I was a child, as we all did. Later on I realized it was a satire of the manners of the times. But good Lord, it’s either one or the other! Not a real place!”
“Maybe he had a sixth sense. Maybe he really was there. Here. In a vision. Maybe he had a vision. They say that he was supposed to have been psychotic, toward the end.”
“Brobdingnag. The other place.” Carmichel pondered. “If this exists, maybe that exists. It might tell us… We might know, for sure. Some sort of verification.”
“Yes, our theory. Hypothesis. We predict that it should exist, too. Its existence would be a kind of proof.”
“The L theory, which predicts the existence of B.”
“We’ve got to be sure,” Basset said. “If we go back without being sure, we’ll always wonder. When we’re fighting the Ganymedeans we’ll stop suddenly and wonder—was I really there? Does it really exist? All these years we thought it was just a story. But now—”
Groves walked over to the control board and sat down. He studied the dials intently. Carmichel sat down beside him.
“See this,” Groves said, touching the big central meter with his finger. “The reading is up to liw, 100. Remember where it was when we started?”
“Of course. At nesi. At zero. Why?”
“Nesi is neutral position. Our starting position, back on Terra. We’ve gone the limit one way. Carmichel, Basset is right. We’ve got to find out. We can’t go back to Terra without knowing if this really is… You know.”
“You want to throw it back all the way? Not stop at zero? Go on to the other end? To the other liw?”
Groves nodded.
“All right.” The Commander let his breath out slowly. “I agree with you. I want to know, too. I have to know.”
“Doctor Basset.” Groves brought the Doctor over to the board. “We’re not going back to Terra, not yet. The two of us want to go on.”
“On?” Basset’s face twitched. “You mean on beyond? To the other side?”
They nodded. There was silence. Outside the globe the pounding and ringing had ceased. The tower had almost reached the level of the port.
“We must know,” Groves said.
“I’m for it,” Basset said.
“Good,” Carmichel said.
“I wish one of you would tell me what it is you’re talking about,” Siller said plaintively. “Can’t you tell me?”
“Then here goes.” Groves took hold of the switch. He held it for a moment, sitting silently. “Are we ready?”
“Ready,” Basset said.
Groves threw the switch, all the way down.
Shapes, enormous and confused.
The globe floundered, trying to right itself. Again they were falling, sliding about. The globe was lost in a sea of vague misty forms, immense dim figures that moved on all sides of them, beyond the port.
Basset stared out, his jaws slack. “What—”
Faster and faster the globe fell. Everything was diffused, unformed. Shapes like shadows drifted and flowed outside, shapes so huge that their outlines were lost.
“Sir!” Siller muttered. “Commander! Hurry! Look!”
Carmichel made his way to the port.
They were in a world of giants. A towering figure walked past them, a torso so large that they could see only a portion of it. There were other shapes, but so vast and dim they could not be identified. All around the globe was a roaring, a deep undercurrent of sound like the waves of a monstrous ocean. An echoing sound, a booming that tossed and bounced the globe around and around.
Groves looked up at Basset and Carmichel.
“Then it’s true,” Basset said.
“This confirms it.”
“I can’t believe it,” Carmichel said. “But this is the proof we asked for. Here it is—out there.”
Outside the globe something was coming closer, coming ponderously toward them. Siller gave a sudden shout, moving back from the port. He grabbed up the Boris gun, his face ashen.
“Groves!” Basset cried. “Throw it to neutral! Quick! We’ve got to get away.”
Carmichel pushed Siller’s gun down. He grinned fixedly at him. “Sorry. This time it’s too small.”
A hand was reached toward them, a hand so large that it blotted out the light. Fingers, skin with gaping pores, nails, great tufts of hair. The globe shuddered as the hand closed around them from all sides.
“General! Quick!”
Then it was gone. The pressure ceased, winking out. Beyond the port was—nothing. The dials were in motion again, the pointer rising up toward nesi. Toward neutral. Toward Terra.
Basset breathed a sigh of relief. He removed his helmet and mopped his forehead.
“We got away,” Groves said. “Just in time.”
“A hand,” Siller said. “Reaching for us. A big hand. Where were we? Tell me!”
Carmichel sat down beside Groves. They looked silently at each other.
Carmichel grunted. “We mustn’t tell anyone. No one. They wouldn’t believe us, and anyhow, it would be very damaging if they did. A society can’t learn something like this. Too much would totter.”
“He must have seen it in a vision. Then he wrote it up as a children’s story. He knew he could never put it down as fact.”
“Something like that. So it really exists. Both exist. And perhaps others. Wonderland, Oz, Pellucidar, Erewhon, all the fantasies, dreams—”
Groves put his hand on the Commander’s arm. “Take it easy. We’ll simply tell them the ship didn’t work. As far as they’re concerned we didn’t go anywhere. Right?”
“Right.” Already, the vidscreen was sputtering, coming to life. An image was forming. “Right. We won’t say anything. Just the four of us will know.” He glanced at Siller. “Just the three of us, I mean.”
On the vidscreen the image of the Senate Leader was fully formed. “Commander Carmichel! Are you safe? Were you able to land? Mars sent us no report. Is your crew all right?”
Basset peered out the port. “We’re hanging about a mile up from the city. Terra City. Dropping slowly down. The sky is full of ships. We don’t need help, do we?”
“No,” Carmichel said. He began to fire the brake rocket slowly, easing the ship down.
“Someday, when the war is over,” Basset said, “I want to ask the Ganymedeans about this. I’d like to find out the whole s
tory.”
“Maybe you’ll get your chance,” Groves said, suddenly sobered. “That’s right. Ganymede! Our chance to win the war certainly fizzled.”
“The Senate Leader is going to be disappointed,” Carmichel said grimly. “You may get your wish very soon, Doctor. The war will probably be over shortly, now that we’re back—empty handed.”
The slender yellow Ganymedean moved slowly into the room, his robes slithering across the floor after him. He stopped, bowing.
Commander Carmichel nodded stiffly.
“I was told to come here,” the Ganymedean lisped softly. “They tell me that some of our property is in this laboratory.”
“That’s right.”
“If there are no objections, we would like to—”
“Go ahead and take it.”
“Good. I am glad to see there is no animosity on your part. Now that we are all friends again, I hope that we can work together in harmony, on an equal basis of—”
Carmichel turned abruptly away, walking toward the door. “Your property is this way. Come along.”
The Ganymedean followed him into the central lab building. There, resting silently in the center of the vast room, was the globe.
Groves came over. “I see they’ve come for it.”
“Here it is,” Carmichel said to the Ganymedean. “Your spaceship. Take it.”
“Our time ship, you mean.”
Groves and Carmichel jerked. “Your what?”
The Ganymedean smiled quietly. “Our time ship.” He indicated the globe. “There it is. May I begin moving it onto our transport?”
“Get Basset,” Carmichel said. “Quick!”
Groves hurried from the room. A moment later he returned with Doctor Basset.
“Doctor, this Gany is after his property.” Carmichel took a deep breath. “His—his time machine.”
Basset leaped. “His what? His time machine?” His face twitched. Suddenly he backed away. “This? A time machine? Not what we—Not—”
Groves calmed himself with an effort. He addressed the Ganymedean as casually as he could, standing to one side, a little dismayed. “May we ask you a couple of questions before you take your—your time ship?”
“Of course. I will answer as best I can.”
“This globe. It—it goes through time? Not space? It’s a time machine? Goes into the past? Into the future?”
“That is correct.”
“I see. And nesi on the dial, that’s the present.”
“Yes.”
“The upward reading is the past?”
“Yes.”
“The downward reading is the future, then. One more thing. Just one more. A person going back into the past would find that because of the expansion of the universe—”
The Ganymedean reacted. A smile crossed his face, a subtle, knowing smile. “Then you have tried out the ship?”
Groves nodded.
“You went into the past and found everything much smaller? Reduced in size?”
“That’s right—because the universe is expanding! And the future. Everything increased in size. Expanded.”
“Yes.” The Ganymedean’s smile broadened. “It is a shock, is it not? You are astonished to find your world reduced in size, populated by minute beings. But size, of course, is relative. As you discover when you go into the future.”
“So that’s it.” Groves let out his breath. “Well, that’s all. You can have your ship.”
“Time travel,” the Ganymedean said regretfully, “is not a successful undertaking. The past is too small, the future too expanded. We considered this ship a failure.”
The Gany touched the globe with his feeler.
“We could not imagine why you wanted it. It was even suggested that you stole the ship to use—” the Gany smiled—”to use to reach your colonies in deep-space. But that would have been too amusing. We could not really believe that.”
No one said anything.
The Gany made a whistling signal. A work crew came filing in and began to load the globe onto an enormous flat truck.
“So that’s it,” Groves muttered. “It was Terra all the time. And those people, they were our ancestors.”
“About fifteenth century,” Basset said. “Or so I’d say by their costumes. Middle Ages.”
They looked at each other.
Suddenly Carmichel laughed. “And we thought it was—We thought we were at—”
“I knew it was only a child’s story,” Basset said.
“A social satire,” Groves corrected him.
Silently they watched the Ganymedeans trundle their globe out of the building, onto the waiting cargo ship.
Nanny
“When I look back,” Mary Fields said, “I marvel that we ever could have grown up without a Nanny to take care of us.”
There was no doubt that Nanny had changed the whole life of the Fields’s house since she had come. From the time the children opened their eyes in the morning to their last sleepy nod at night, Nanny was in there with them, watching them, hovering about them, seeing that all their wants were taken care of.
Mr. Fields knew, when he went to the office, that his kids were safe, perfectly safe. And Mary was relieved of a countless procession of chores and worries. She did not have to wake the children up, dress them, see that they were washed, ate their meals, or anything else. She did not even have to take them to school. And after school, if they did not come right home, she did not have to pace back and forth in anxiety, worried that something had happened to them.
Not that Nanny spoiled them, of course. When they demanded something absurd or harmful (a whole storeful of candy, or a policeman’s motorcycle) Nanny’s will was like iron. Like a good shepherd she knew when to refuse the flock its wishes.
Both children loved her. Once, when Nanny had to be sent to the repair shop, they cried and cried without stopping. Neither their mother nor their father could console them. But at last Nanny was back again, and everything was all right. And just in time! Mrs. Fields was exhausted.
“Lord,” she said, throwing herself down. “What would we do without her?”
Mr. Fields looked up. “Without who?”
“Without Nanny.”
“Heaven only knows,” Mr. Fields said. After Nanny had aroused the children from sleep—by emitting a soft, musical whirr a few feet from their heads—she made certain that they were dressed and down at the breakfast table promptly, with faces clean and dispositions unclouded. If they were cross Nanny allowed them the pleasure of riding downstairs on her back.
Coveted pleasure! Almost like a roller coaster, with Bobby and Jean hanging on for dear life and Nanny flowing down step by step in the funny rolling way she had.
Nanny did not prepare breakfast, of course. That was all done by the kitchen. But she remained to see that the children ate properly and then, when breakfast was over, she supervised their preparations for school. And after they had got their books together and were all brushed and neat, her most important job: seeing that they were safe on the busy streets.
There were many hazards in the city, quite enough to keep Nanny watchful. The swift rocket cruisers that swept along, carrying businessmen to work. The time a bully had tried to hurt Bobby. One quick push from Nanny’s starboard grapple and away he went, howling for all he was worth. And the time a drunk started talking to Jean, with heaven knows what in mind. Nanny tipped him into the gutter with one nudge of her powerful metal side.
Sometimes the children would linger in front of a store. Nanny would have to prod them gently, urging them on. Or if (as sometimes happened) the children were late to school, Nanny would put them on her back and fairly speed along the sidewalk, her treads buzzing and flapping at a great rate.
After school Nanny was with them constantly, supervising their play, watching over them, protecting them, and at last, when it began to get dark and late, dragging them away from their games and turned in the direction of home.
Sure eno
ugh, just as dinner was being set on the table, there was Nanny, herding Bobby and Jean in through the front door, clicking and whirring admonishingly at them. Just in time for dinner! A quick run to the bathroom to wash their faces and hands.
And at night—
Mrs. Fields was silent, frowning just a little. At night … “Tom?” she said.
Her husband looked up from his paper. “What?”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. It’s very odd, something I don’t understand. Of course, I don’t know anything about mechanical things. But Tom, at night when we’re all asleep and the house is quiet, Nanny—”
There was a sound.
“Mommy!” Jean and Bobby came scampering into the living room, their faces flushed with pleasure. “Mommy, we raced Nanny all the way home, and we won!”
“We won,” Bobby said. “We beat her.”
“We ran a lot faster than she did,” Jean said.
“Where is Nanny, children?” Mrs. Fields asked.
“She’s coming. Hello, Daddy.”
“Hello, kids,” Tom Fields said. He cocked his head to one side, listening. From the front porch came an odd scraping sound, an unusual whirr and scrape. He smiled.
“That’s Nanny,” Bobby said.
And into the room came Nanny.
Mr. Fields watched her. She had always intrigued him. The only sound in the room was her metal treads, scraping against the hardwood floor, a peculiar rhythmic sound. Nanny came to a halt in front of him, stopping a few feet away. Two unwinking photocell eyes appraised him, eyes on flexible wire stalks. The stalks moved speculatively, weaving slightly. Then they withdrew.
Nanny was built in the shape of a sphere, a large metal sphere, flattened on the bottom. Her surface had been sprayed with a dull green enamel, which had become chipped and gouged through wear. There was not much visible in addition to the eye stalks. The treads could not be seen. On each side of the hull was the outline of a door. From these the magnetic grapples came, when they were needed. The front of the hull came to a point, and there the metal was reinforced. The extra plates welded both fore and aft made her look almost like a weapon of war. A tank of some land. Or a ship, a rounded metal ship that had come up on land. Or like an insect. A sowbug, as they are called.
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories Page 51