Chapter XIV
INTERGALACTIC SPACE
"Well, Sirius has retreated a bit," observed Arcot. The star was indeedseveral trillions of miles away. Evidently they had not been motionlessas they had thought, but the interference of the Thessian ship hadthrown their machine off.
"Shall we go back, or go on?" asked Morey.
"The ship works. Why return?" asked Wade. "I vote we go on."
"Seconded," added Arcot.
"If they who know most of the ship vote for a continuance of thejourney, then assuredly we who know so little can only abide by theirjudgment. Let us continue," said Zezdon Afthen gravely.
Space was suddenly black about them. Sirius was gone, all the jewels ofthe heavens were gone in the black of swift flight. Ten seconds laterArcot lowered the space-control. Black behind them the night of spacewas pricked by points of light, the infinite multitude of the stars.Before them lay--nothing. The utter emptiness of space between thegalaxies.
"Thlek Styrs! What happened?" asked Morey in amazement, his pet Venerianphrase rolling out in his astonishment.
"Tried an experiment, and it was overly successful," replied Arcot, aworried look on his face. "I tried combining the Thessian high speed_time_ distortion with our high _speed_ space distortion--both on lowpower. 'There ain't no sich animals,' as the old agriculturist remarkedof the giraffe. God knows what speed we hit, but it was plenty. We mustbe ten thousand light years beyond the galaxy."
"That's a fine way to start the trip. You have the old star maps to getback however, have you not?" asked Wade.
"Yes, the maps we made on our first trip out this way are in thecabinet. Look 'em up, will you, and see how far we have to go before wereach the cosmic fields?"
Arcot was busy with his instruments, making a more accuratedetermination of their distance from the "edge" of the galaxy. Headopted the figure of twelve thousand five hundred light years as theprobable best result. Wade was back in a moment with the informationthat the fields lay about sixteen thousand light years out. Arcot wenton, at a rate that would reach the fields in two hours.
Several hours more were spent in measurements, till at last Arcotannounced himself satisfied.
"Good enough--back we go." Again in the control room, he threw on thedrive, and shot through the twenty-seven thousand light years of cosmicray fields, and then more leisurely returned to the galaxy. The starmaps were strangely off. They could follow them, but only withdifficulty as the general configuration of the constellations that weretheir guides were visibly altered to the naked eye.
"Morey," said Arcot softly, looking at the constellation at which theywere then aiming, and at the map before him, "there is something very,very rotten. The Universe either 'ain't what it used to be' or we havetraveled in more than space."
"I know it, and I agree with you. Obviously, from the degree ofalteration off the constellations, we are off by about 100,000 years.Question: how come? Question: what are we going to do about it?"
"Answer one: remembering what we observed _in re_ Sirius, I suspect thatthe interference of that Thessian ship, with its time-field opposing ourspace-field did things to our time-frame. We were probably thrown offthen.
"As to the second question, we have to determine number one first. Thenwe can plan our actions."
With Wade's help, and by coming to rest near several of the stars, thenobserving their actual motions, they were able to determine theirtime-status. The estimate they made finally was of the order of eightythousand years in the past! The Thessian ship had thrown them that muchout of their time.
"This isn't all to the bad," said Morey with a sigh. "We at least haveall the time we could possibly use to determine the things we want forthis fight. We might even do a lot of exploring for the archeologists ofEarth and Venus and Ortol and Talso. As to getting back--that's aquestion."
"Which is," added Arcot, "easy to answer now, thank the good Lord. Allwe have to do is wait for our time to catch up with us. If we just waiteighty thousand years, eight hundred centuries, we will be in our owntime."
"Oh, I think waiting so long would be boring," said Wade sarcastically."What do you suggest we do in the intervening eighty millenniums? Playcards?"
"Oh, cards or chess. Something like that," grinned Arcot. "Play cards,calculate our fields--and turn on the time rate control."
"Oh--I take it back. You win! Take all! I forgot all about that," Wadesmiled at his friend. "That will save a little waiting, won't it."
"The exploring of our worlds would without doubt be of infinite benefitto science, but I wonder if it would not be of more direct benefit if wewere to get back to our own time, alive and well. Accidents alwayshappen, and for all our weapons, we might easily meet some animal whichwould put an abrupt and tragic finish to our explorations. Is it notso?" asked Stel Felso Theu.
"Your point is good, Stel Felso Theu. I agree with you. We will do nomore exploring than is necessary, or safe."
"We might just as well travel slowly on the time retarder, and work onthe way. I think the thing to do is to go back to Earth, or better, thesolar system, and follow the sun in its path."
They returned, and the desolation that the sun in its journey passesthrough is nothing to the utter, oppressive desolation of empty spacebetween the stars, for it has its family of planets--and it has noconscious thought.
The Sun was far from the point that it had occupied when the travelershad left it, billions on billions of miles further on its journey aroundthe gravitational center of our galactic universe, and in the eightymillenniums that they must wait, it would go far.
They did not go to the planets now, for, as Arcot said in reply to StelFelso Theu's suggestion that they determine more accurately theirposition in time, life had not developed to an extent that would enablethem to determine the year according to our calendar.
So for thirty thousand years they hung motionless as the sun moved on,and the little spots of light, that were worlds, hurled about it in amad race. Even Pluto, in its three-hundred-year-long track seemed madlygyrating beneath them; Mercury was a line of light, as it swirled aboutthe swiftly moving sun.
But that thirty thousand years was thirty days to the men of the ship.Their time rate immensely retarded, they worked on their calculations.At the end of that month Arcot had, with the help of Morey and Wade,worked out the last of the formulas of artificial matter, and themachines had turned out the last graphical function of the last branchof research that they could discover. It was a time of labor for them,and they worked almost constantly, stopping occasionally for a game ofsome sort to relax the nervous tension.
At the end of that month they decided that they would go to Earth.
They speeded their time rate now, and flashed toward Earth at enormousspeed that brought them within the atmosphere in minutes. They hadlanded in the valley of the Nile. Arcot had suggested this as a means ofdetermining the advancement of life of man. Man had evidentlyestablished some of his earliest civilizations in this valley wherewater and sun for his food plants were assured.
"Look--there _are_ men here!" exclaimed Wade. Indeed, below them werevillages, of crude huts made of timber and stone and mud. Rubble workwalls, for they needed little shelter here, and the people were butsavages.
"Shall we land?" asked Arcot, his voice a bit unsteady with suppressedexcitement.
"Of course!" replied Morey without turning from his station at thewindow. Below them now, less than half a mile down on the patchwork ofthe Nile valley, men were standing, staring up, collecting in littlegroups, gesticulating toward the strange thing that had materialized inthe air above them.
"Does every one agree that we land?" asked Arcot.
There were no dissenting voices, and the ship sank gently toward a roadbelow and to the left. A little knot of watchers broke, and they fled interror as the great machine approached, crying out to their friends,casting affrighted glances at the huge, shining monster behind them.
Without a jar the mighty weight of the s
hip touched the soil of itsnative planet, touched it fifty millenniums before it was made, fivehundred centuries before it left!
Arcot's brow furrowed. "There is one thing puzzles me--I can't see howwe can come back. Don't you see, Morey, we have disturbed the lives ofthose people. We have affected history. This must be written into thehistory that exists.
"This seems to banish the idea of free thought. We have changed history,yet history is that which is already done!
"Had I never been born, had--but I _was_ already--I existed fifty-eightythousand years before I was born!"
"Let's go out and think about that later. We'll go to a psych hospital,if we don't stop thinking about problems of space and time for a littlewhile. We need some kind of relaxation."
"I suggest that we take our weapons with us. These men may have weaponsof chemical nature, such as poisons injected into the flesh on smallsticks hurled either by a spring device or by pneumatic pressure of thelungs," said Stel Felso Theu as he rose from his seat unstrappinghimself.
"Arrows and blow-guns we call 'em. But it's a good idea, Stel Felso, andI think we will," replied Arcot. "Let's not all go out at once, and thefirst group to go out goes out on foot, so they won't be scared off byour flying around."
Arcot, Wade, Zezdon Afthen, and Stel Felso Theu went out. The nativeshad retreated to a respectful distance, and were now standing about,looking on, chattering to themselves. They were edging nearer.
"Growing bold," grinned Wade.
"It is the characteristic of intelligent races manifestingitself--curiosity," pointed out Stel Felso Theu.
"Are these the type of men still living in this valley, or who will beliving there in fifty thousand years?" asked Zezdon Afthen.
"I'd say they weren't Egyptians as we know them, but typical Neolithicmen. It seems they have brains fully as large as some of the men I seeon the streets of New York. I wonder if they have the ability to learnas much as the average man of--say about 1950?"
The Neolithic men were warming up. There was an orator among them, andhis grunts, growls, snorts and gestures were evidently affecting them.They had sent the women back (by the simple and direct process ofsweeping them up in one arm and heaving them in the general direction ofhome). The men were brandishing polished stone knives and axes, variousinstruments of war and peace. One favorite seemed to be a large club.
"Let's forestall trouble," suggested Arcot. He drew his ray pistol, andturned it on the ground directly in front of them, and about halfwaybetween them and the Neoliths. A streak of the soil about two feet wideflashed into intense radiation under the impact of millions on millionsof horsepower of radiant energy. Further, it was fused to a depth oftwenty feet or more, and intensely hot still deeper. The Neoliths took asingle look at it, then turned, and raced for home.
"Didn't like our looks. Let's go back."
They wandered about the world, investigating various peoples, and provedto their own satisfaction that there was no Atlantis, not at this timeat any rate. But they were interested in seeing that the polar capsextended much farther toward the equator; they had not retreated at thattime to the extent that they had by the opening of history.
They secured some fresh game, an innovation in their larder, and awelcome one. Then the entire ship was swept out with fresh, clean air,their water tanks filled with water from the cold streams of the meltingglaciers. The air apparatus was given a new stock to work over.
Their supplies in a large measure restored, thousands of aerialphotographic maps made, they returned once more to space to wait.
Their time was taken up for the most part by actual work on the enormousmass of calculation necessary. It is inconceivable to the layman whattremendous labor is involved in the development of a single mathematicalhypothesis, and a concrete illustration of it was the long time, withtremendously advanced calculating machines, that was required in theirpresent work.
They had worked out the problem of the time-field, but there they hadbeen aided by the actual apparatus, and the possibilities of makingdirect tests on machines already set up. The problem of artificialmatter, at length fully solved, was a different matter. This hadrequired within a few days of a month (by their clocks; close to thirtythousand years of Earth's time), for they had really been forced todevelop it all from the beginning. In the small improvements Arcot hadinstituted in Stel Felso Theu's device, he had really merely followedthe particular branch that Stel Felso Theu had stumbled upon. Hence itwas impossible to determine with any great variety, the type of mattercreated. Now, however, Arcot could make any known kind of matter, andmany unknown kinds.
But now came the greatest problem of all. They were ready to start workon the data they had collected in space.
"What," asked Zezdon Afthen, as he watched the three terrestrians begintheir work, "is the nature of the thing you are attempting to harness?"
"In a word, energy," replied Arcot, pausing.
"We are attempting to harness energy in its primeval form, in the formof a space-field. Remember, mass is a measure of energy. Two centuriesago a scientist of our world proposed the idea that energy could bemeasured by mass, and proceeded to prove that the relationship was thenow firmly intrenched formula E=Mc^{2}.
"The sun is giving off energy. It is giving off mass, then, in the formof light photons. The field of the sun's gravity must be constantlydecreasing as its mass decreases. It is a collapsing field. It is true,the sun's gravitational field does decrease, by a minute amount, despitethe fact that our sun loses a thousand million tons of matter every fourminutes. The percentage change is minute, but the energy releasedis--immeasurable.
"But, I am going to invent a new power unit, Afthen. I will call it the'sol,' the power of a sun. One sol is the rating of our sun. And I willmeasure the energy I use in terms of sun-powers, not horsepower. Thatmay tell you of its magnitude!"
"But," Zezdon Afthen asked, "while you men of Earth work on thisproblem, what is there for us? We have no problems, save the problem ofthe fate of our world, still fifty thousand years of your time in thefuture. It is terrible to wait, wait, wait and think of what may behappening in that other time. Is there nothing we can do to help? I knowour hopeless ignorance of your science. Stel Felso Theu can scarcelyunderstand the thoughts you use, and I can scarcely understand hisexplanations! I cannot help you there, with your calculations, but isthere nothing I can do?"
"There is, Ortolian, decidedly. We badly need your help, and as StelFelso Theu cannot aid us here as much as he can by working with you, Iwill ask him to do so. I want your knowledge of psycho-mechanicaldevices to help us. Will you make a machine controlled by mentalimpulses? I want to see such a system and know how it is done that I maycontrol machines by such a system."
"Gladly. It will take time, for I am not the expert worker that you are,and I must make many pieces of apparatus, but I will do what I can,"exclaimed Zezdon Afthen eagerly.
So, while Arcot and his group continued their work of determining theconstants of the space-energy field, the others were working on themental control apparatus.
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