by Eando Binder
“I insist,” said Clyde. With a shrug, Barton turned for the door. “Let the doc check me over then. But I’m going to be back before Brains gives his answer to the alien map.”
“Alien map?” echoed Clyde when Barton had gone.
“Sorry, chief,” Hillory smiled lamely. “Guess I should have informed you of my brainstorm.” Hillory then told the surprised director of his inspiration. “We’ll have the answer soon from Brains,” he finished, “as to whether we’re on the right track.”
Hillory’s face became serious. “But before that, I think there is something you all ought to know.” He and Merry had not told the others, by common consent, of their experiences with the walking skeleton and murderous motorcycle. Now it had to be told.
“What should we know?” queried Clyde, puzzled.
“Let’s wait until Barton returns from the checkup. I’m sure the doctor will release him shortly. And would you please call in Chumley. You can inform the rest of the staff later.” Hillory noticed the puzzled look in Clyde’s eye. “Believe me, it’s important, chief.”
“If you say so,” nodded Clyde. He strode to where a telephone and intercom box stood on a table. He flipped the intercom’s stud for Chumley’s lab, telling him quietly to come.
Meanwhile, Merry Vedec came bustling in. “Thule,” she said anxiously. “I slept late and I just heard about what happened. Did that horrible android hurt you? Was it like the skeleton and…”
Hillory took her hand and drew her aside. “Yes, and I’m going to tell the story in a moment. The rest have a right to know.” His face became brooding. “We may all be in danger while that alien map is in our hands.”
“Is it really a map?” asked Merry eagerly. “Was your hunch right?”
“Brains will give his answer in about 20 minutes.” Barton came in at that moment. “Doc said I’m a roughneck,” he announced flippantly. “Or toughneck, to be exact. No more than some lacerated skin.” He stared around in surprise, suddenly noticing the others. “Why the big welcoming committee?”
“I’ve got something to tell all of you,” said Hillory, drawing himself up and facing the small group. “The android didn’t suddenly turn killer. Something entered him—animated him.”
At their surprised murmurs, Hillory went on to tell of how the saucer skeleton and motorcycle had both menaced himself and Merry.
At the end, they were all looking stunned. “But what kind of strange force could make inanimate objects move like that?” whispered Barton.
“I don’t know,” admitted Hillory, his dark eyes brooding. “It might be some kind of intelligent entity that is invisible, even intangible, with the power to ‘enter’ objects and exercise kinetic force.”
“Rot,” scoffed Barton. “Anyway, why would it attack us here?”
“To get hold of that metal-foil map,” said Hillory softly. “It failed to get the map away from Merry and me. So it tried here again.”
“Sounds weird,” said Barton with a shiver. “Some kind of ghost or spirit haunting us for an alien message.”
“Not the traditional phantom,” denied Hillory. He hesitated then blurted it out. “A mind. A disembodied alien mind from outer space, one that is determined to get that metal map away from us.”
Clyde stared. “Now surely you don’t mean a…a pure mind?”
“A free mind,” amended Hillory, slowly. “You know of my psi experiments where I’ve charted the psychic factors in the human mentality, all the way from hypnotism and dreams to ESP. I can’t go into detail here but there is strong empirical evidence that the mind itself is completely independent of the physical brain and can be separated from it. I’ve been trying to do it myself but haven’t yet succeeded.”
He waved at Barton. “Apparently our alien visitor did succeed and was able to animate the android. Become its mind, so to speak. Psychokinesis must have come into play, of course—the mental ability to move matter.”
“Strange,” muttered Chumley, who had listened intently. “I’ve been unable to activate the plasto-brains of my androids. Yet an alien mentality was able to do so and take over control of Petunia.”
“That’s all pretty much in the paranormal range,” said Clyde shrewdly. “How sure are you that you’ve guessed right, Hillory?”
“I’m not sure at all,” admitted Hillory, jerking up his hands. “Call it a hunch—which is also one of my charted psi characteristics. But this much I can say.” He stared at the group somberly. “Assuming my theory of a free alien mind lurking among us is true, were all in danger—everyone at Serendipity that has anything to do with the metal map. The alien mentality, invisible to us, can enter other objects of any unexpected type. It may attack again and again. Obviously, it considers the metal map very important and it will use any means to wrest it away from us.”
Clyde looked stricken. “A ghastly unseen killer stalking Serendipity Labs,” he quavered, glancing fearfully over his shoulder. “This is terrible. I’m responsible for all of your lives. What will we do about it?” He was appealing to Hillory.
“Let’s not press the panic button,” Hillory said, but feeling a cold chill down his spine. “I was thinking about it before Barton returned. After we hear what Brains has to say, I’ll carry out a plan I have in mind—to trap the mind-entity.”
“Trap something invisible and intangible?” snorted Chumley.
Hillory was about to say more when a bell rang.
“The five hours and 7 minutes are up,” said Barton, galvanized into action and running to his computer controls. “Brains is ready with his answer as to whether the metal scroll is a map or not.”
All of them tensed with wonder. Hillory forgot to breathe.
With something of a dramatic gesture and unconsciously stroking his mustache, Barton pressed the button for voice read-out. The computer’s flat tones sounded out. “The alien markings on the metal scroll are sections of a geographical chart, based on the topographical features of the planet Earth.”
Hillory cheered silently. The others glanced at him in admiration for his ingenious insight into the mystery.
“A system of coordinates is used,” went on the computer, “that uses a circle divided into 99 degrees, plus linear measurements analogous to kilometers and other metric units. From this, it can be determined that certain definite spots on earth are marked off as being significant.”
The computer stopped, waiting for questions.
“Significant in what way?” demanded Barton.
“There are four such spots marked around the world. It would appear that something is hidden or buried at each spot.”
Hillory and Barton jerked their eyes at each other, the same stunning thought instantly coming up.
“A treasure map,” breathed Barton. “As if space pirates from some remote world hid their priceless loot on earth in different places.” He shook his head in self-reproof at the bizarre thought. “Poppycock. It can’t be storybook twaddle like that.”
“Maybe not,” agreed Hillory, “but it does seem as if someone from outer space did visit earth, perhaps long ago, and did conceal something at various earthly sites. What that something or somethings are, we can only find out by digging them up….”
He swung to the computer mike. “Tell me, Brains. Where is one of the marked locations?”
“This has not yet been figured out,” returned the cybernetic mastermind.
“Why not?” snapped Barton.
“You didn’t ask me.”
Barton threw an imaginary bomb at the machine. “All right, smarty. So work out one of the four locations. How long will it take?”
23 MINUTES, 7.6 SECONDS read the lighted sign.
“Duck soup, eh?” grinned Barton. “Now that Brains has the basis of comparison between alien and earth measurements, he has an easy job so to speak. But still brain-twisting. I imagine he will have to scan each net of those fine lines to find some recognizable coastline or land mass on earth and go on from there.”
Dr. Clyde was
mopping his brow. “This is all so…overwhelming. So incredible.” His face suddenly lighted up. “Actually, it’s the biggest tiling Serendipity Labs has ever stumbled on. Interstellar treasure—”
“Whoa,” said Hillory, jerking up a hand. “We don’t know that. It’s sheer guesswork. We can assume that something important to aliens is hidden at each spot, but we can hardly extrapolate as to what it is. It may be utterly worthless in earthly eyes.”
“I’m no romantic nincompoop,” returned Clyde, testily. “I meant ‘treasure’ in another sense. Any artifact from another civilization in space—even a two-headed spoon they eat with—would, of course, be a priceless find. In fact, mere gems or gold ingots would be a disappointment. The things of an extraterrestrial culture would be the real treasure.”
Chapter 4
Clyde had put into words what all of them felt. The growing excitement at the thought of unearthing artifacts or relics that came from an alien civilization of some remote stellar system of planets. They all waited impatiently now for Brains to speak up. Pacing the floor, Barton and Hillory collided with one another and looked at each other in surprise.
Finally, the time limit was up and Barton pressed the voice button. Their faces collectively fell as the words boomed out.
“Unable to trace any of the four spots. The geographical markings and drawings do not seem to fit earth at all.”
“Liar,” spat out Barton, his mustache twitching angrily. “You told us before it did refer to earth topography. Explain your inconsistency—and it had better be good or I’ll pour glue in your works.” The others had to smile. Barton had formed an almost human rapport with his cyber partner and treated it like a sometimes recalcitrant servant.
“An anomaly does exist,” reported Brains, in imperturbable tinny tones. “Analysis of the alien coordinates clearly showed it was a world the size of earth and having precisely one-g gravity, plus magnetic poles at the correct approximate positions. It would be unlikely for any other world to duplicate these conditions to as many decimal points. Yet upon trying to locate any one of the four spots, starting from a stated baseline, the data became erratic.”
“Crazy. Wild. A world like earth and yet not like earth,” breathed Barton, knocking his forehead. Hillory looked like someone who had fallen into a dark pit with no ray of light penetrating.
“A world not like earth,” spoke up Merry Vedec in her lilting voice, “because it changed through the ages.”
“That’s it,” yelped Hillory, coming out of his dark pit. “The saucer in which we found the document was ancient. The map refers to prehistoric earth, when the continents and seas and mountains were all different. We just have to get maps the geographers have worked out for prehistoric earth.”
“But which prehistoric earth?” said Dr. Clyde quickly. “If you go back to Cambrian times, it’s totally different from Jurassic times. Each age featured a far different face for earth. How do we choose?”
Hillory almost felt like hating Clyde. An enormous barrier now stood in their way. An air of gloom fell over them smotheringly.
“Wait a minute,” said Barton, his voice lifting. “Simple. We date the saucer which held the scroll. Not carbon dating, of course, but whatever works with metal.”
“No good,” said Hillory. “The occupants of the saucer came with the scroll as if to find the treasure, to call it that. But who made the scroll and how much earlier? The ones who hid the treasure on earth might have done so centuries or thousands of years before. We’re dealing now with cosmic stretches of time. So the answer is to date the scroll itself. But who—?”
“Yonah,” said Clyde. “Ivan Yonah. His work on the chronon, or basic unit of time, has included all subatomic particles and all forms of radioactive breakdown of atoms.”
Barton took the metallic scroll out of the computer, and they all strode down the hall to Yonah’s lab. Long before they reached it, they heard the stream of smoking oaths from his open door.
“These cussword bubble-chamber tracks are no cuss-word cussword good,” he was storming. The handsome man with angelic features glared at the visitors. “And what do you cussword people want?”
“Please,” admonished Clyde. “There is a lady present.”
“Merry?” snorted Yonah. “She taught me some of my best swear words, in five languages. Well, what’s the cussword pitch?”
Hillory handed over the scroll with a short briefing on what had transpired. Finally he said, “Can you date it by radioactive techniques?”
Yonah turned the metal-foil sheet over and over in his hands. “The cussword stuff is osmium. Only way to date it is by measuring the residual radioactivity left in its thorium impurities—if it has any cussword impurities.”
Hillory shuddered at that. “How long will it take?”
“Oh, several days, after I finish my current bubble-chamber work for a clue to the chronon.”
“Days?” groaned Hillory. “Listen, do it right away.”
“Sir?” said Yonah, drawing himself up indignantly and looking noble. “Drop my work for your cussword chasing of rainbows? I’ll get at it tomorrow then, maybe.”
“You will please get at it right now,” said Clyde quietly, stepping forward.
“I cussword won’t,” growled Yonah.
“Yes, you will,” barked Clyde, his goatee bristling. “It’s a cussword order.”
Yonah was so astonished at the mild-mannered director using an oath that his mouth hung open. “Well, if you put it that way,” he chuckled, “I’ll start right now.”
“Wait,” said Hillory in dismay, holding the osmium foil sheet. “This can’t be dated by any radioactive method. It isn’t earthly osmium. It’s osmium from some other world that may have been formed sooner or later than earth in cosmological terms, maybe by millions of years. That would make its rate of thorium decay entirely different from a specimen of our osmium.”
“You would think of that,” said Barton, as if peeved at Hillory.
“But he’s right, of course,” agreed Yonah, looking disappointed. “Sorry I can’t help. I doubt anyone can. But try Argyle, anyway.”
They all trooped disconsolately to Lab No. 2 where Alloway Argyle, with his black eye-patch, looked like a pirate in disguise. His thick lips twisted almost malevolently in contrast to the cultured voice and words that came out. “Gentlemen? And the lady? How can I serve you?”
Hillory synopsized the story and held out the alien scroll. “Radioactive dating won’t work,” he said. “Is there any other method possible?”
“Yes, I think so.” Argyle heaved his big body into a chair and spoke leisurely. “This will take a bit of explaining. Besides the embossed markings on the scroll, there are engraved markings. So my method would be to measure how much the etched lines in the metal map have filled up.” At their blank stares, he went on. “Any material—even rock or glass or steel or any metal—tends to flow through a long enough period of time. Think of scratching a groove in soft wax. Come back a year later, and that groove will be partly filled in as the pressure of the side walls forces material inward.”
He waved the heavy foil of alien metal. “Now in the case of osmium, you have to allow thousands or tens of thousands of years for the slightest appreciable filling of the groove.”
“But that does no good,” objected Hillory, “if you don’t know how deep or wide that groove was originally, when the aliens scratched their chart on it.”
“Not so,” returned Argyle promptly. “When you scratch any hard surface with a sharp instrument, a groove is formed with ridges at the two sides. And there happens to be a constant that applies to any and all cut grooves. It’s a ratio between its depth and width on the one hand, and the height of the ridges on the other hand. It will apply to the extraterrestrial osmium as well. All osmium in the universe, whether from some mine in Orion or some backyard junkpile on Betelgeuse—Betel-juice, you know—is chemically identical with local osmium. Besides, the groove-ridge ratio holds for any mat
erial from here to the next galaxy and beyond. It’s a physical not chemical constant, relating to pressures and the slow movements of displaced atoms.”
“Have you ever used this so-called dating method before?” asked Barton suspiciously.
Argyle’s piratical face looked ferocious. “My dear skeptic. My first project here at Serendipity Labs, before my pursuit of the noble quark, was a study of universal principles of elemental atoms throughout the cosmos. It was then I applied my groove-ratio formula to the ‘flow’ of scratched metals. As a test, I dated a meteorite that way, analyzing its markings. My figure came out within 1 per cent of the estimate of meteorite specialists.”
“I apologize,” said Barton in visible relief.
“Then,” growled Argyle, “let’s get on with the dating process.”
“How long will it take?” said Hillory, wincing at the thought of perhaps days for such a delicate operation.
“Oh, my meson microscope will easily magnify every detail of the grooves so that I can quickly determine how long ago the etched lines were first made. Say about three hours?”
Hillory looked happy. He took Merry’s hand. “Meanwhile, let’s visit the library and dig up all the ancient maps of earth through geological ages. We’ll need them when Argyle gives his verdict.”
The librarian on duty led Hillory and the girl to the chart room fairly well supplied with the necessary past-age maps of earth, as its surface was twisted and torn and rearranged constantly through violent upheavals.
Looking at the successively older maps, Merry made a face. “The farther back you go, the less earth’s surface resembles anything we know today. There were flooded continents, mountain ranges being born or disappearing, or even a time when all the land masses of earth were together and slowly pulled apart. It’s like an alien world way back there.”
Hillory was just as depressed. “If the dating is anything older than the Pliocene Epoch a million years ago, we’ve had it. In the Pliocene, earth was roughly like it is today except for some surface changes made by several ice ages. But prior to that there would have been no landmark known today, such as Mount Everest or the Great Lakes. It would be hopeless to find any spot on the map in a younger and completely altered earth.”
