by Earl
Somehow, it seemed quite natural to Fostar to talk of these things with this girl, though she was a total stranger. Keen interest glowed in her face. Where most others would have been offended at the lack oi convention, or completely unintrigued by the topic, this girl quickly followed his cue.
“It’s so mysterious!” she said softly. “Almost—ominous!” She shuddered slightly, though there was no hint of chill in the warm summer breeze.
The man nodded soberly. “There is a threat in it, too,” he agreed. “If Earth passes into the Beyond—”
Her eyes were suddenly on his, wide and startled. She interrupted. “Are you one of those—those fools who believe that?” she cried.
Fostar stood dumfounded at her sudden vehemence. “Fools?” he repeated sharply. “You just said yourself—”
“The Beyond is ominous, but remote,” she interposed. “Surely you don’t believe Earth is in danger?” She made a contemptuous gesture. “You’ve been reading Dr. Bronzun’s bogey-man story!”
The young man’s face burned, beneath its tan. “It happens that I’m Rolan Fostar, assistant to Dr. Bronzun!” he snapped.
“Oh!” She faced him for a moment in confusion. “I’m sorry for what I said,” she murmured. Then, with feminine caprice, mocking lights stole into her elfin eyes. “How quaint—for grown men to make up fairy-tales!”
Anger hammered in Fostar’s pulses, but before he could release the hot words on his lips, a hand touched his elbow. It was the attendant, back again. “Marten Crodell will see you now, sir,” he informed, turning to lead the way below.
Fostar hesitated a moment, glaring at the girl. Then he twisted on his heel, but after three steps he whirled.
“What’s your name?” he demanded impulsively.
She peered at him half indignantly for a moment. Then—“Alora. Alora—Templeton,” she smiled.
The girl remained in Rolan Fostar’s mind while he followed his guide down greenstone steps, across carpeted corridors, and finally in an elevator to the very topmost part of the building’s slim tower. He might ordinarily have taken more notice of the sumptuous interior of Interplanetary Real Estate Corporation, which he saw for the first time. Its richness bespoke the wealth and extent of its financial empire in the Solar System. Tapestries of Venusian silk, furniture of loan glow-wood, and the odd murmuring plants of Titan in niches lent an otherworldly air to the place.
But the girl slipped from his mind when he was ushered finally into the presence of Marten Crodell, in a small room faintly redolent with the exotic perfume of Rhean horticulture.
Marten Crodell, seated at a glow-wood desk, was a tall, thin man, more ungainly than the tele-news usually pictured him. He was ascetic in appearance—narrow face, pinched cheeks, thin nose and lips, close-cropped hair. He was dressed in unrelieved black. His eyes were strange—dark and shadowed, staring out like two glowing coals from the sallow complexion of his skin. Fostar noticed his hands, thin and nervous, the fingers constantly flexing and unflexing.
The two men stared at each other for a moment. Fostar felt himself being sized up, weighed, by the man who controlled the largest privately-owned institution on Earth and in the Solar System—a man whose wealth in terms of money was incalculable. Fostar, in turn, flatly thought of Crodell as one who bought power. Those fingers, clenching and unclenching, were grasping—clutching—
“Dr. Bronzun?”
Marten Crodell’s voice, high-pitched and terse, shattered the silence. He frowned. “I had thought you would be an older man—” Fostar gave his name and added, “Dr. Bronzun sent me in his place.”
“I wanted to see him!” snapped Crodell. “Why didn’t he come here?”
“Because everyone doesn’t have to come running at your least command!” flared back Fostar, still half-angered from the episode with the gild. He strode to the desk and leaned over it. “I only came here myself, Marten Crodell, to tell you that to your face. You may wield a scepter of power over thousands of men, here on Earth and the planets, but not all others. Next time you want to see Dr. Bronzun, come to our laboratory!”
Fostar turned for the door.
“Just a minute, young man!”
The tones, strangely enough, were half apologetic. Fostar hesitated, then turned back. After all, Dr. Bronzun had told him to find out what Marten Crodell wanted. Fostar had let his anger cany him away. He met the eyes of the plutocratic land-owner and saw in them a faint gleam of approbation, perhaps admiration.
“I like your spirit, Fostar.” The thin lips smiled slightly. “Sit down, please. I wished to see Dr. Bronzun about something very important. I presume you are qualified to answer for him?”
“I’ve been with him for five years, as assistant in his laboratory, and pilot of his space-ship, on his researches,” asserted Fostar.
“Good enough,” nodded Crodell. He turned to a tele-news recorder on a stand beside his desk and flicked the switch. With a quiet hiss, the recording roll rotated within and a clear, electrical reproduction of voice came forth.
“The following is unofficial and unconfirmed,” spoke the announcer’s smooth voice. “Dr. Jole Bronzun claims he now has fully confirmed his own prediction of a year ago—that Earth and the Solar System will plunge into the ‘Edge of Space,’ within a half-century. Our velocity toward the ‘Beyond’—as he calls it—is about 18,000 miles a second. He has obtained this result, he says, by careful measurements on Mars, Ganymede and Oberon. The Edge of Space, he declares, is no more than five light-years away.
“Secondly, Dr. Bronzun warns that catastrophe will result! Earth and all the planets will be destroyed, when they reach the Edge of Space. In the Beyond, he predicts, there are no cosmic rays. There is complete nothingness. All the normal laws of the universe that we know are null and void. Matter and life cannot exist in such a negative space.
“Dr. Bronzun has not, as yet, offered any alternative to this annihilation, if his prophecies are correct. But he pleads that other scientists hasten to confirm his results and then take up the important matter of what to do to save the human race. We repeat that this report is unofficial and unconfirmed.
“Bulletin from Dardo, Mars. Reconstruction of Canal M-3 progressing—”
MARTEN CRODELL snapped off the instrument and eyed Fostar.
“That news item, taken up by the greedy news-agencies as thrilling fodder for the masses, was broadcast yesterday to millions of people, throughout the System. Your Dr. Bronzun has sown a seed of fear in many gullible hearts. It is flagrant sensationalism!” The land-owner crashed a thin fist on his desk for emphasis. “It must never happen again!”
“Why?” challenged Fostar calmly. “Did the Interplanetary stock market drop a few points—spoil some of your financial deals?”
The sallow face across the desk darkened. “That has nothing to do with it,” Crodell growled. “As a matter of fact, there was a Blight drop in the market. Six times in the past year, Dr. Bronzun has made these wild reports, and each time there has been a growing reaction. It can eventually lead to panic among the masses. That is what I’m afraid of!”
“And that is what we want!” said Fostar quietly. “Not panic, actually, but an awareness of the doom that faces us!”
“You actually believe that?” gasped Marten Crodell, as though the thought were utterly novel. “I’d surmised your game was cheap publicity, for some invention, perhaps. But now I see that you are fanatics! You have a phobia, a fixed obsession, that such a doom threatens!”
Rolan Fostar looked grim. “I wish it were just a phobia, but figures don’t lie.” He stood up again, talking rapidly, earnestly. “Our galaxy, or island universe, lies in a unique position—near the true Edge of Space. As you and everyone are aware, our summer skies show no stars, no nebulae—nothing. We look out upon nonspace!”
Crodell waved a hand. “It has been the same for hundreds of thousands of years,” he scoffed. “Why be alarmed at this late date?”
“Because we have been appro
aching the Edge of Space all that time!” pursued Fostar. “Our particular galaxy is roughly wheel-shaped, as most of them are. It is turned edgewise to the Beyond, and is rotating. And our sun and planet system are right now at the topmost swing of this gigantic wheel! Only five more light-years of distance separate us from the verge of the Beyond—from the Edge of Space!”
“The Edge of Space!” sneered Crodell. “Dr. Bronzun invented the term. It’s a figment of his mind.”
“You want facts,” Fostar continued inexorably. “All right. At our laboratory we have a set of news-records, collected in the past year. Do you recall the inexplicable occurrence during the Olympic Games at Byrdville, Antarctica—where a certain high-jumper leaped twenty-five feet? He wasn’t able to duplicate the performance, nor could the other athletes. For just a brief moment, the law of gravity had slipped. Then, in a European village last winter, matches could not be lighted for a stretch of several hours. The laws of friction had temporarily been suspended. There are many other cases.
“All these add up to one thing,” he concluded. “The Edge of Space is not a sharp line of demarcation. We are already within the fringes of it, accounting for the isolated examples of suspended natural laws. Spacetime is thinning, and when Earth reaches deeper into the Beyond, chaos will result!”
Marten Crodell seemed undisturbed. “Granting all that,” he remarked shortly. “There is still no danger. Astronomers have determined that our sun, rather than going outward, is moving inward toward the rest of the universe.”
“They have used the wrong system of—” began Fostar.
The land-owner glowered. “All the eminent astronomers of Earth are wrong—and Dr. Bronzun is right?” he mocked.
Rolan Fostar felt helpless dismay steal into him. No use to go on. It was like a voice crying in the wilderness, against all the inertia and stability of a ponderous civilization.
He glared bitterly at the land magnate.
“Marten Crodell,” he pronounced, “the day is coming when your money empire will fall into ashes. Because the only hope for the human race—”
“Theatrics!” exploded Crodell. “I won’t hear any more of it.” His voice became harsh, his eyes hard. “You and Dr. Bronzun are croaking fanatics, I’m convinced of that. I warn you that I can’t tolerate any more scaremongery. I’ll crush you, if I must, and I have the power to do it. For one thing, you will never be able to send a message over the public news-casts again—I’ve seen to that. Furthermore, if you don’t retract your last statement within three days, I’ll swear our a warrant for your arrest!”
Fostar shrugged, realizing the interview was over. “You must make a bad enemy,” he observed. “But you can’t fight the truth, Marten Crodell!”
CHAPTER II
“A FOURTH PASSENGER . . .”
WITHOUT another word he jerked open the door and strode down the hall. An attendant came hurrying after him, to guide him politely to the landing roof.
Rolan Fostar stood for a moment, beside his aerocar, letting the evening breeze cool his hot forehead. He looked up at lonely Mars and Saturn, in the empty sky, and the moon. No stars. The Beyond ate up stars, for other suns must have blundered to the Edge of Space. Sol would go on, to its doom. And here the world lay, unaware, stupidly complacent in a false security. He felt like shouting it out over the housetops, but that would do no good. Years from now they would awake to the menace—when it might be too late!
A white form glided forward from the shadows. Fostar turned and looked at the elfin face of Alora Templeton, softly illumined by silvery moonlight. He caught his breath at the picture.
“You saw Marten Crodell?” she asked. “What did he say?”
“Everything stupid!” Fostar said fiercely, anger welling in him again. Anger at the girl, too. “He wouldn’t listen to me either. But we’ll show him. We’ll take a ship out there, to the Edge of Space, and bring back proof!”
The girl gasped. “You can’t go out there!” she protested. “The fastest ship can go only 10,000 miles a second. It would take you 90 years to go out to that Beyond you speak of. How foolish—”
“Foolish, eh?” he almost snarled at her. “We’ll see who the fools are!”
She started to speak, but he jumped into his aerocar and slammed the door. Not till he was skimming high over the city did he feel remorse for letting his temper get the best of him, both with Crodell and the girl—particularly the girl. His grim lips loosened a bit as his mind’s eye conjured up her face, a saucy face, and yet somehow sweet. If the future did not loom with such portentous things, he would have the right to think of going back to her. But he couldn’t. Very likely he would never see her again.
Dr. Jole Bronzun had spent a lifetime studying the cosmos, but a human lifetime is short compared to the majestic motions and schedules of galactic systems. He had not seen the finger of doom pointing till the year before—pointing toward the Beyond!
He had checked and rechecked his observations, hoping he was wrong, but the shift of spectroscopic lines toward the red, in the spectrums of nearby nebulae, left no room for doubt, at least in his mind. Yet so delicate had been his measurements, that he was not sure himself, sometimes.
How easy it was for a man, with his little senses, to misinterpret the great cosmos!
One other great discovery had come to the worshiper of the infinite—that the speed of light could be exceeded, contrary to classical belief since Einstein. With the powerful electro-magnifying telescopes of the time, he had seen solar prominences, of certain of the nearest and hottest stars, shoot outward, disappear and reappear, much further away. During the period of vanishment, the light-speed had been exceeded!
Amazed, he had taken spectroscopic records and finally detected the strange type of supermagnetic field required for the phenomenon. In his laboratory, then, he had brought this weird physical effect down from the stars. He had it now, incorporated into the atomic-motor of a spaceship. Fostar, with his mechanical skill, had helped him in the past five years, since he was an old friend of his dead father.
Dr. Bronzun was not young any more. His beard and the thin hair of his head were white. His peerings into the heavens for long hours, hunched over instillments, had made him stooped. His eyes were calm and gentle, from contemplation of the peaceful depths of space. Underneath his lofty brow were the dreamy features of the thinker.
But his face was deeply worried now, as he listened to Rolan Fostar’s recital of the meeting with Marten Crodell. His fine, blue-veined hands made weary gestures.
“Marten Crodell thinks we’re fanatics,” Fostar concluded. “But he’s the fanatic! All he’s concerned with is interplanetary finances. Convinced that we’re scare-mongers, he’s our bitter enemy. I doubt that we can get the public ear any more—and he’ll have us arrested in three days—probably on trumped up charges.”
Dr. Bronzun nodded hopelessly. “We’re stopped on all sides. My colleagues have discredited me as an astronomer. At their advice, the government has refused to make an official investigation.”
His eyes were pained, with the look of a man who realizes that a lifetime of study is unappreciated by his fellow men.
“Stopped on all sides,” he repeated, “Except—one!”
They looked at each other and then wordlessly stepped into the large shed next to the laboratory. It housed the scientist’s private space-ship, a small craft in which Fostar had piloted him to various planets. The engine had been removed and lay now on the repair block. A man labored over it, face and hands smeared with grease.
He looked up. “I don’t think we will come back,” he said dolefully.
Angus Macluff, the scientist’s handyman for twenty years, had never been known to smile. His ragged features and gravel voice were perpetually pessimistic. He had openly called his employer a fool about many things, but a peculiar sense of devotion tied him to the scientist.
His gnarled hand indicated the huge, intricate helix of shiny beryllium that he had just finis
hed bolting into the framework of the powerful atomic-engine. It was Dr. Bronzun’s “trans-space drive.”
“It won’t work, gentlemen,” he demurred. Not for sustained driving over the speed of light. Remember, we blew out a rocket tube on the test flight to Mars. If we go too far, we’ll blow up out there, and leave our bones in outer space!”
“Cheerful as ever!” grinned Fostar. “This is a larger and better helix, and there shouldn’t be any limit to our cruising range.”
“Yes, I’m confident of that,” Dr. Bronzun said firmly. His eyes shone with pride, for the new trans-space drive could have revolutionized space commerce. But he was not ready to announce it yet. It must first serve the purpose for which—basically—he had devised it. And that was to prove the doom that lay in the Beyond.
“We must leave in three days,” he continued, “before Marten Crodell can carry out his threat of arrest. Embark for the Beyond! Bring back first-hand data of the menace that lies out there! It’s our only course now.”
“And stick it under their noses,” muttered Fostar, thinking of the land-owner—and the girl.
“If we come back!” croaked Angus Macluff dourly. He turned suddenly. “I thought I heard the door creak,” he said, ambling toward it. The shed door was partly ajar, but there was no one there. He did not notice the figure that crouched behind the hedges and later jumped into an aerocar that disappeared toward the heart of the city.
ON THE morning of the third day, as dawn broke redly over the sleeping city nearby, their space-ship roared into the sky, bound for the remotest destination in human history. Within it, three humans gazed back at the receding Earth with somber eyes.
“Let’s hope,” said Angus Macluff picturesquely, “that we will feel its summer breezes and winter chills again!”
“We will, of course, you croaking raven,” admonished Rolan Fostar, but his words were more cheerful than his tone. He had looked forward to this venture, while they had been developing the new drive, but now he felt the chill of the unknown penetrating his every cell. He looked into the Beyond, through his conning port, and wondered what they would meet out there.
