Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  You may return to your own world whenever you wish, at the exact second you left it, with the killer’s gun ready to snarl death at your friend. But, before you do that, you must find some way of saving your friend’s life.

  Can it be done?

  In this story I have given one solution. There are probably others.

  So here it is: the problem of the infinite moment. It deals with Lee Denham, who was a physicist, and it begins on a winter night in New Jersey.

  CHAPTER I

  The Traitor

  A FEW fat flakes of snow drifted against the dark rectangle of the window, but they were the last. Moonlight was beginning to filter through the clouds. Lee Denham, sighing, found pipe and tobacco pouch, and walked across the room to stare out into the night.

  The young physicist was a smallboned man, lean and wiry, with shoulders stooped by years spent in study and research. His thin face was pleasantly ordinary, with keen blue eyes and a permanent wrinkle between the dark brows.

  He looked out across a broad, snow-blanketed yard toward the massive main buildings of the university. The Science Hall, from a window of which Denham watched now, was separated from the rest of the colleges.

  In the distance the headlights of a car grew brighter. Were they coming at last?

  His position here was rather enviable, the physicist thought. Technically, he was an instructor, but he lectured seldom. Only a month before he had spoken to the president about this, feeling somewhat embarrassed.

  “Don’t worry about that, Lee,” the older man had said. “We’ve always been pretty liberal here, and your research is a bit more important than giving lectures. That last paper you published, on quantum mechanics, made quite a furor. I’ve an idea that you may be the biggest name in your field one day. All this may be unorthodox, Lee, but the board of trustees backs me up. They’re immensely interested in your new theory. When do you think—”

  When would the research be finished? Denham turned to eye a small black suitcase on the laboratory bench. The working model was completed. As yet he had given little consideration to the practical aspects of the device, but now his mind turned to the possibilities.

  They were—incredible!

  He felt a little worried. He should have taken more precautions. The model would be fearfully dangerous in the wrong hands. Scowling, Denham glanced out the window again. He saw with relief that the car whose headlights he had glimpsed was slowing to a stop below.

  Presently the door opened, admitting a girl and a tall, broad-shouldered man who was shaking the snow from his Homburg.

  Denham’s eyes opened a bit wider and he came forward.

  “Lana?”

  “Hello,” Lana Bellamy said, and kissed him lightly. “I phoned Steve tonight, and he said you’d called. Naturally I felt a bit uneasy.”

  Denham smiled at his fiancée.

  “I’m just taking precautions.”

  He turned to the man and gripped Steve Denham’s muscular arm.

  “Thanks for coming so promptly.”

  His eyes held admiration as he glanced at the big frame of his brother. He had always rendered the older man hero-worship, in a fashion. Steve had been the family daredevil, reckless and courageous. As a boy he had defended his smaller brother and still, Lee Denham knew, felt affectionately protective.

  On the other hand, Steve never tired of boasting of his brother’s scientific achievements—most of them unrealized as yet. For his part, Lee triumphantly collected and saved the press notices about Steve Denham, soldier of fortune, ace flyer and adventurer. There was no rivalry.

  Steve saw both Lana and his brother as kids and could not help patronizing them, in the kindest manner imaginable. When Lee had phoned him earlier that night, mentioning his fears, the older man wasted no time in racing across the bridge to Jersey.

  STEVE wandered over to the suitcase and examined it curiously. “This the gadget? Not very big, is it?”

  “It doesn’t have to be. The trouble is, now that it’s finished, it can be duplicated very easily. I even destroyed my formulae—the principle’s so easy to remember. Any good physicist could see how the device works and apply it himself. Prexy felt it ought to be protected.”

  “Okay, runt. I’ll take care of it.” Lee Denham lit his pipe.

  “I phoned Garver and arranged for him to put it in the vault of his bank tonight. Prexy’s already been talking to him. He said he’d go down there immediately and wait. So here’s what I’d like you to do, Steve—take the machine to the bank in Union City and turn it over to Garver.” Steve whistled.

  “The thing must be plenty important if that old sourpuss is going to open the vault for it after hours.”

  “Prexy insisted. He made me promise—Anyhow, take care of it, will you?”

  “Sure. You’ll come back with us and bunk at my place tonight, eh?” Denham shook his head.

  “I’ve a rather important experiment to finish. Can’t leave it now. I’d have driven to Union City myself, but my radiator’s frozen.”

  Lana’s eyes were worried.

  “I wish you wouldn’t stay here alone.”

  “I’ve done it before. And there’s really no danger.”

  Steve picked up the suitcase carefully.

  “How long will your experiment take? Couple of hours? Okay. I’ll put the gadget in the bank, take Lana home and then come back here for you.”

  “Oh, shut up,” he grinned as his brother started to protest. “If I didn’t interfere, you’d sleep on that rickety couch in your lab every night. Finish your experiment, and I’ll be back in an hour or two. If you’re not through by then I’ll wait for you. Adios.”

  He slapped Lee’s shoulder and went out.

  “Sure you’ll be all right?” Lana added.

  “Sure,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  Then she was gone, too. Well—that was that!

  Humming under his breath, Denham turned back to the bench, where he did things with test-tubes and a Bunsen burner. As usual, he lost all track of time. But it must have been nearly an hour before the interruption.

  He was pouring liquid into a small, heavy beaker when the. door opened. Glancing up, Denham grunted in surprise and set the beaker down on his desk.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  The man who closed the door gently behind him was as big as Steve, but he gave the impression of leopardlike tenseness. He wore well-fitting tweeds. His smooth, handsome face was like a mask of mahogany. Blond hair was brushed back smoothly from his forehead. Hat in hand, he smiled at Denham.

  “I think you can,” he said. “My name’s Rex Maxwell. I want to talk to you.”

  Denham moved swiftly, but Maxwell was faster. Before the smaller man’s finger had touched the buzzer on the wall, he was caught by the shoulder and flung crashing across the room. Dazedly Denham picked himself up, nursing a rising bump on the back of his head.

  MAXWELL gestured to the desk. “Sit down.”

  As Denham slowly obeyed, the man took a revolver from his pocket and seated himself on the desk’s edge.

  “Now we’ll talk,” he went on pleasantly. “That buzzer summons the night watchman, doesn’t it? Well, he’s dead. I take no risks.”

  “What do you want?” Denham said hoarsely.

  “Your invention,” Maxwell told him. “I’ve been investigating it for quite a while. I have—resources. I found out, for example, that you were requested to put the machine under lock and key. So I knew I had to move immediately. The storm delayed me, or I’d have arrived sooner.”

  Denham felt a kind of relief. The device, at least, was safe. Maxwell, whoever he was, had come too late.

  Denham said so. The other man’s face did not change, but his eyes went cold and hard.

  “I think you’re lying,” he said. “Later, I’ll make certain. We’re safe from interruption for about five hours. I made sure of that, too.”

  Denham scowled. His brother would be back within an hour, probably.
If he could only stall Maxwell till then—

  “Who are you, anyway?” he asked. “All this is—rather melodramatic. Are you a—a spy?”

  Maxwell laughed.

  “I’m a businessman. My merchandise is—everything. It may be a newly invented bomb-sight, a process for hardening steel, or something like your machine. There are always customers for valuable inventions. I secure those inventions, and sell them to the highest bidder.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Remember Jensen?” Maxwell purred.

  “Seth Jensen, the metallurgist? He died a few months ago. You mean—”

  “I mentioned a process for hardening steel. It was Jensen’s. There was only one copy of the formula, in Jensen’s safe. I made sure of that, before I killed him. Certain European powers paid me very well for that formula.”

  Maxwell went on smoothly.

  “I know more about you and your invention than you think,” he said. “I know that you destroyed the formulae, and that the machine itself can be easily duplicated. You will give me the machine—”

  “So you can kill me and sell my invention to Germany or Japan?” Denham blazed suddenly. “Go to the devil!”

  CHAPTER II

  Infinity

  FOR a brief second cold murder gleamed in Maxwell’s eyes.

  “I’m not playing,” he said, very gently. “Before I leave this room, you’ll give me the machine. And you’ll tell me how it works.”

  Denham hesitated. Soon Steve would be returning, and then—But would Maxwell hear the car as it drove up? The physicist began to talk, rather loudly.

  “All right,” he nodded. “I’ll tell you what you want to know—because it’ll do you no good anyway. The machine isn’t here.”

  “You can duplicate it,” Maxwell said confidently. “Perhaps I’ll invite you to visit me for a while. Till you’ve completed another model. Perhaps I can see that the original one is destroyed. However—” He shrugged, fondling the gun. “Just what does the device do?”

  Now Denham was in his element, lecturing.

  “It projects a vibration—a ray—which can either contract or expand the atomic structure.”

  “My information is that the device can create giants.”

  Denham nodded.

  “The final tests aren’t completed yet, but the machine is far more powerful than I’d expected. Matter isn’t solid, you know. It’s composed of a framework of atoms, electrons revolving around their nucleus. Thus a man can expand under the ray—grow into a giant—as his body expands. Conversely, he can shrink to the vanishing point.”

  Maxwell wasn’t stupid.

  “What about mass?” he asked. “A man small as an ant would weigh a good deal. He’d still have the same mass.”

  “No. Quanta—energy—is released from the atom as the subject shrinks. It’s regained when he grows again. Otherwise a man reduced to infinitesimal size would simply sink through the ground to the center of the Earth—like a bit of neutronium, the heaviest element known.”

  Denham reached for a sponge in its glass cup on the desk.

  “Let this represent a man. I squeeze it—and water runs out. The water represents energy, quanta, mass. The smaller the sponge gets, the more water is wrung out of it, and the less it weighs.”

  “I see,” Maxwell nodded. “What about the other way around?”

  “Energy is gained. There’s free energy in the air itself, you know.”

  “How large or how small can a man be made?”

  Denham’s eyes glowed.

  “There is no limit,” he said.

  “As large as—” Maxwell hesitated. “As large as a mountain?”

  The physicist’s laugh was strained.

  “As large as the Earth itself! This is no toy! It’s something unimaginably powerful. With the machine, I can make a man so large that the Earth—the Solar System—the universe itself are merely specks of dust in his hand!”

  Quickly Denham continued. He thought he heard footsteps on the stairs. Steve returning? No doubt his brother had entered by a side door, which the physicist had unlocked in anticipation of his brother’s earlier arrival, and had forgot to relock. If only Maxwell did not also hear the sound of climbing footsteps now—

  “It’s no pipe-dream. It’s based on a vibratory principle that acts directly on the atom, shrinking or enlarging it by decreasing or increasing the charge. There are theories that this whole universe is simply a speck of sand in some immeasurably larger universe.

  “With my machine, I could even enlarge myself so I could emerge into the hyper-world, that inconceivably enormous one—

  “Shut up, Denham!” Maxwell said suddenly.

  He moved toward the wall, beside a tall steel cabinet whose bulk hid him from anyone at the door.

  “Be smart, Denham. Whoever comes in, send them right away.”

  The physicist licked dry lips. When Steve opened the door, how could he warn his brother? Then he noticed the small, heavy beaker on the desk before him, and his eyes narrowed.

  The door opened. But it was not Steve who entered. It was Lana Bellamy, her hair disheveled, slush staining her galoshes and stockings. In her hand she carried the black suitcase.

  Denham’s stomach seemed to turn over as Lana came toward him. She was talking breathlessly, not realizing that anything was amiss.

  “Lee, there’s been an accident! You know how fast Steve drives. The car turned over when we took a short cut, and he’s unconscious. I came back to get help. I brought the machine. I didn’t want to leave it—”

  Denham moved then. His fingers closed over the beaker and, whirling, he flung it with vicious accuracy. The gun exploded, digging splinters from the floor as it was knocked out of Maxwell’s hand. The big man, grimly silent, dived after it.

  Denham acted instinctively. He had no chance to reach the revolver; Maxwell would be sure to intercept him first. Instead, he leaped toward Lana. His left hand gripped the suitcase’s handle, and he almost carried the girl across the threshold and out into the hall. Instantly he turned, slamming the door shut. A bullet sang through the panel.

  “Lee! What is it—” Lana was gasping.

  “Come on!” he said, and together they fled toward the stairway.

  Down it they raced, hearing heavy footsteps in pursuit. At the bottom Denham hesitated for a moment.

  There was no way to escape. Maxwell was on their heels. There was no automobile ready, nor time to get a cold engine started. And no help, except at the main buildings, nearly a quarter of a mile away across bare, moonlit snow. Now that Maxwell knew Denham had the machine, he would not hesitate to shoot. It was the device itself he wanted now, not its inventor.

  Gripping Lana’s arm, Denham whirled and dragged her down another staircase, into the dimly lit basement.

  “We’ll have to hide,” he rasped. “In—in here.”

  He chose a door at random, for already Maxwell was running down the cellar steps. Into darkness they plunged, and Denham clicked the lock as he found the light switch. The blackness of the room was suddenly gone.

  Finger at his lips, Denham waited. Had Maxwell glimpsed them entering the room? Footsteps passed and died; then they came back. And faded again.

  Denham looked around. This room was used for chemical research; it was merely an empty cubicle of cement with a workbench across one wall. The single window, high up, was covered with a strong metal grill. They were trapped.

  There came the sound of doors opening and closing. Maxwell was hunting his quarry. Eventually he would reach this room—

  “That man—he’s trying to kill you, Lee!” Lana gasped.

  DENHAM nodded. His gaze lit on the suitcase. Abruptly he was kneeling beside it, unsnapping the lock. He drew out a conical helmet, from which wires dangled to a rectangular box, which he clipped to his belt.

  “Only one way out, I’m afraid,” he whispered. “We’re trapped in this room. But we can still use my machine.”

  “He’s tr
ying to kill you,” Lana repeated, pale and shocked.

  The sound of Denham’s movements seemed abnormally loud in the little room as he connected the vibratory projector. The helmet he slipped over his head. There was a rattling of the door knob.

  Denham worked with desperate speed.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m going to turn on the ray full power. Send us down into smallness—infinite smallness. It’s the only chance we have. We’re unarmed, and—”

  He made the last connection.

  “Keep close to me, so you’ll be under the ray’s influence.”

  The key fell tinkling to the floor as Maxwell used a lock pick. The door burst in. Maxwell plunged across the threshold, his mahogany face alight with triumph. His gun bucked and snarled.

  Denham gasped as his right leg went numb with agony. But already his hand had clicked over a tiny stud on the box at his belt.

  Maxwell jerked to a halt. He aimed the revolver, directly at Denham’s heart. Simultaneously Lana cried out and tore herself from the physicist’s grip. He had not expected that. As he tried to hold her, his leg buckled and he came down heavily on the concrete floor.

  What he saw then was imprinted on his mind with photographic clarity. Lana had flung herself into the path of the bullet that would spurt from the gun Maxwell held leveled. The killer’s hand had already contracted on the trigger. Denham saw the hammer quiver—begin to fall—

  The revolver’s muzzle was not ten inches from Lana’s forehead. The scene had the blinding distinctness of a lightning flash. And then—Darkness! The darkness of infinity itself!

  CHAPTER III

  A World Apart

  SOMETHING caressed him, with a cool, rhythmic motion. It was water, rippling up to lave him and then flooding back once more. Somehow Denham felt that he had not been unconscious for long.