The Universe Between

by Alan E Nourse

  “Then you do have a transmatter working,” Gail said.

  “We do. It’s working poorly, inconsistently, but it’s working.”

  “And you started testing it first very shortly before the tip of Manhattan disappeared — am I right?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. About eight hours before. But I can’t see what connection there is — ”

  “A very simple connection,” Gail interrupted him. “What happened in New York was no natural disaster. There’s reason to think that it was a carefully calculated, premeditated blow — very possibly a retaliatory blow — and that something you have been doing with your transmatter was the direct cause of it. This thing that happened in Philadelphia may have been a second blow, and there may be more to come. Worse ones. These may just have been warnings.”

  “Warnings from whom?” McEvoy demanded. “About what?”

  “From the Thresholders. About what, I don’t know, except that I’m certain that it’s connected with your transmatter.”

  “You mean to say that a little four-dimensional hypercube has some kind of power to whack off a chunk of a city the size of New York?” McEvoy stared at her, incredulous. “Preposterous!”

  “Not preposterous,” Gail said. “I’m not talking about a little four-dimensional hypercube. There’s another entire universe that we were in contact with in the Threshold project, a whole, organized physical universe. It lies side by side with our own, except that its natural laws are different from ours. The two may be superimposed on each other, maybe even share the very same atoms, for all we know. But in that universe, from our point of view, there are extra spacial dimensions.”

  She paused for a moment, while McEvoy continued to stare at her.

  “There is a crossing point between our universe and theirs, like a tissue-thin divider,” Gail went on. “A divider that’s invisible to us and probably to them too, so neither side had ever been aware of the other’s existence, until you punched a hole through the divider with your ultra-low-temperature experiments twenty years ago. You didn’t mean to do it; you didn’t even know the divider was there. But apparently you were focusing energy on a single tiny point and broke through. And you couldn’t handle it. You couldn’t even investigate, but there was a universe beyond that divider, all the same. You pulled back then because you had to; now I think you’re somehow punching more holes through, and somebody or something on the other side is getting hurt for some reason and is striking back. And we have no idea what power they may have to strike back with.”

  Throughout the discussion Robert had remained silent, staring out the window at the gray, overcast sky and trying to remain unobtrusive. Until now. McEvoy had studiously ignored him, but now he sat back, staring first at Gail and then at Robert. “You keep saying ‘we,’” he said finally, “and you seem to know a whole lot about this — this other universe. How have you found out about it? And just whom do you mean by ‘we’?”

  Gail nodded toward Robert. “My son and I. But mostly Robert. And I don’t know a whole lot about the Other Side, other than what Robert has learned.”

  “How has he learned anything?”

  “From experience,” Gail said. “The only way anybody could learn anything about it — by crossing through. Robert has been going across to the Other Side and back ever since he was a baby.”

  12

  DOWNSTAIRS, Dr. Hank Merry led them through a labyrinth of half-assembled electrical and electronic equipment to the large laboratory room that housed the transmatter. Merry looked red-eyed and weary, his sandy hair askew, two days’ stubble on his chin. One lab bench was littered with paper, coffee cups and the debris from half a dozen box lunches; a cot against the wall had obviously been slept in.

  In the center of the room, the transmatter hummed. A technician was weighing, measuring and radio-analyzing a series of graduated metal test blocks, then placing them one by one on the transmitter plate, and recording results as the blocks vanished and reappeared on the receiver plate. The place was littered with papers and a large blackboard was filled with unintelligible scribbles.

  “How’s it going?” McEvoy said.

  “Not very good.” Merry shook his head wearily. “It’s almost completely unpredictable and inconsistent, and if anything, it’s getting worse instead of better. About half the time now, nothing comes through at all. It’s like a door into nowhere. The test blocks just disappear. Or when they do come through they may be molten, or powdered, or chemically altered. It just defies logic, the way this thing is working.”

  “This woman thinks your gadget here caused that chunk of Manhattan to disappear,” McEvoy said.

  “Well, I’ve lost half a ton of steel test blocks into it — ” Merry broke off, confused. He looked at McEvoy and back to Gail. “Are you serious?”

  “Quite serious,” Gail said.

  “But I haven’t had this thing anywhere near — say, what is this?”

  Briefly, McEvoy told him about the conversation upstairs. Robert, listening with one ear, went to peer over the technician’s shoulder as he loaded another test block onto the transmitter plate. “So I hated to bother you,” McEvoy concluded, “but I thought if she got at look at this machine and a brief rundown on how it works, she might realize how ridiculous this whole idea is.”

  “Well — ” Hank Merry sounded dubious. “I can tell you how it’s supposed to work. In theory, that is. What it’s actually doing is something else. The idea is to tear down the test block on the transmitter plate, atom by atom, by means of a very high energy force field — a lot like the weather shield we have over the city, but tightly focused. Then when the test block is reduced to its component wavicles, we transmit it to the receiver plate, and reassemble it there with all the atoms returned to their original position. It’s like tearing a house down board by board and nail by nail, and then shipping it to some other place and reassembling it in reverse order, the last board first and so on. Except that it’s the molecular structure of the test blocks that we’re dealing with, not boards and nails.”

  Gail nodded. “But you’d have to keep some kind of accurate record of the way the house was taken down, if you ever wanted to get it put back together again right.”

  “That’s right. And that’s where the Hunyadi plates come in. The test block is really a collection of subatomic wavicles, held in a particular configuration by certain specific stresses — electromagnetic fields, subnuclear forces, and so on. The plates look complicated, but they’re really nothing but sheets of silver mesh coated with a special synthetic protein material. The protein molecules are hooked together in enormously long chains, which are all held in alignment until the transmitter begins decomposing the test block. Then various components of the chain shift alignment and act as a code or pattern to be used when the test block is being reassembled: almost like a dressmaker’s pattern. In effect, the plates ‘memorize’ the subatomic configuration of the test block and then guide the reassembly.” Merry paused and looked glum. “At least they’re supposed to do that. The trouble is that they aren’t all wired in yet, and the transmatter is still reassembling things fine without them — sometimes.”

  “And sometimes not,” Gail said.

  “That’s right,” Merry admitted.

  Robert had been listening closely. Now he turned to Hank. “That’s what I don’t understand,” he said. “I always thought that all parts of a machine had to be functioning if you expected the machine to work at all. I mean, if the filament in a light bulb burns out, the light quits working, even if everything else is in perfect working order — right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And if the fuse was blown, you’d be pretty startled to see the light go on, all of a sudden, before you put a new fuse in.”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “Then how can this gadget work if all its parts aren’t even assembled yet?” Robert asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out!” Merry said in exasperation
. “The point is that it does. Look, watch this.”

  He crossed the room, set a test block on the transmitter plate, and turned the control switch. The block vanished and reappeared on the reeciver plate across the room. He repeated the procedure. Again the block vanished — but this time it didn’t reappear at all. “I can’t explain it, but it’s happening.”

  “Some other things are happening too,” Robert said quietly. “Pieces of New York and Philadelphia are disappearing. Nobody can explain that, either.” He picked up one of the test blocks, weighed it in his hand, and looked up at Hank Merry. “Okay, suppose you watch for a minute and see if you can explain this.”

  With the test block under his arm, Robert walked over to stand beside the transmitter plate. Suddenly he vanished, block and all. At the same instant he reappeared across the room, standing next to the receiver plate, still clutching the block under his arm. As Hank Merry’s jaw sagged, Robert walked back and tossed him the test block. “Now, then. Explain that.”

  Merry looked at McEvoy, who looked as startled as he did, then back at Robert. “I — I — what did you do?”

  “I think I did the same thing your machine here has been doing,” Robert said, “only I did a better job of it.”

  Gail glared at her son, clenching her fists. “I swear,” she said angrily, “if you weren’t so big I’d just whale you! This is not a magic show!”

  Merry continued to stare at the boy. “You were — over here, and then — well, now, wait a minute! Do that again!”

  “No, thanks.” Robert’s face was gray, and sweat was standing out on his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said to Gail. “I guess that wasn’t so smart. It was the same as before, except that I went quickly.”

  “Went where?” Hank demanded.

  “She can tell you,” Robert said, looking decidedly ill now. “I think I’d better sit down for a minute.”

  Her anger fading, Gail told Hank Merry what she had told McEvoy earlier. “We can’t prove it,” she said, “but we know you’re creating a highly concentrated stress field on that transmitter plate. You’re sending things from Point A to Point B, all right, but you’re shoving them through another dimension in order to do it. And something — or somebody — on the Other Side very emphatically doesn’t like it a bit. Whatever you’re doing is causing trouble that Robert’s going and coming has never caused, and it looks as though something on the Other Side has picked up the tip of Manhattan Island and dumped it somewhere, in retaliation. Maybe they twisted it completely out of our space, so that in our universe it just doesn’t exist any more. Maybe it was just moved to another time sector. Maybe they dumped it in the middle of the ocean. It might not be hard for the Thresholders. But if they keep it up, it could be catastrophic for us.”

  “But why?” McEvoy burst out. “What are we doing to hurt them?”

  “I don’t know. But I think somebody had better find out before you do it any more.” She hesitated. “Probably Robert could help find out if you turned that gadget off long enough to give him time. Probably you and Dr. Merry could help, too, if you would.”

  McEvoy shook his head angrily. “Do you realize what you’re asking me to do? You’re suggesting that I go before the International Joint Conference — the toughest crowd of practical politicians and businessmen the world has ever known — and tell them, ‘Sorry, fellows, but we have to close down this promising transmatter project right now because some spooks from the fourth dimension seem to be taking offense and biting off pieces of our universe.’ Oh, this is ridiculous!”

  Hank Merry looked at his chief. “You saw what the boy did, John. He didn’t go by transmatter.”

  “I know what I saw,” McEvoy snapped. “But I also know this woman, and I know she thinks this Threshold universe is her personal property, somehow, so she can just shut me out any time I get too close to it. Well, she’s wrong. There’s not a nickel’s worth of evidence that your transmatter has anything to do — ”

  He broke off as the wall speaker suddenly blared his name. “Dr. McEvoy … Dr. McEvoy … extension 301, please. Urgent!” Glowering at Gail Benedict, McEvoy stalked to the lab phone. He spoke sharply into it, then listened in silence for a long moment, his face going gray. “You’re dead certain they’re onto that? … Yes … Yes …” He shot a glance at Gail. “Look — tell them she’s gone. No, I don’t know where, just gone. And tell them that we’ve run into snags and had to close down the machine for a while, and then route the Security people to me personally. I can snarl them up for a while.”

  McEvoy turned away from the phone, obviously shaken. “Okay, you win,” he said to Gail. “Your call through the Hoffman Center was traced by Security, and now somebody in Washington has connected up our old Threshold project with these disasters, and they want you for questioning, very badly. As well as Merry and me. They didn’t sound very pleasant about it, either. Especially since there’s been another — incident.”

  “Philadelphia?” Gail said.

  “Upstate New York, just a few minutes ago,” McEvoy said. He slammed his hand viciously into his palm. “A square mile chunk of farmland disappeared, left a hole forty miles deep. With all of Lake Erie pouring into it.”

  There was a stunned silence. Then Robert said, “A government interrogation could tie us up for weeks.”

  “I know. But you’re going to have to get out of here fast if you want to avoid it. When the Security boys move in they don’t waste time.”

  “Can you get this machine stopped, and cover for us?”

  McEvoy nodded. “I’ll stop it as fast as I can get the red tape unwound. But I can’t stop it indefinitely. The pressures to get a transmatter operating are going to pull it right out of my hands.”

  “Then we’ll have to work fast,” Robert said. “I have an idea of what we might do, but I’ll need some help. Can Dr. Merry go with us?”

  “If I can help,” Hank said.

  “Then let’s move!” Robert jotted down a Massachusetts phone contact for McEvoy. “This number and address aren’t listed, and even Security can’t pry it loose without risking a privacy suit. Keep a line open for us; we’ll keep you posted on what we’re doing.”

  “You’d better. But get moving; the guards here are already alerted. If Security gets here first, you’ll never get out of the building.”

  “We’ll get out,” Robert said confidently. “Don’t worry.”

  They started down the corridor from the lab, Gail on one side of Hank Merry, Robert on the other. “Now listen carefully,” Robert said to Hank. “We may have to short-cut if we run into trouble. We can take you too, if we have hold of your arms. If you hear me say, ‘Here goes!’ you shut your eyes and keep them shut, and hold your breath. We’ll be able to do the rest — I think.”

  It seemed like an unnecessary precaution until Robert saw two tall men falling in behind them down the corridor. “Oh, oh,” he said. “Walk fast, but don’t run.” As they quickened their pace, so did the men. The first one caught up with them as they stepped into the elevator. Robert placed both hands on the man’s chest and shoved him back into the corridor as Gail punched the up button for the next higher floor. The door slammed in the man’s face and the elevator shot upward.

  The next floor looked clear until they spotted a man standing near the stairwell. “The other way,” Hank Merry said. “We can get the executive elevator.”

  “No time,” Robert said. The man was already moving in on them. “This way.” He started down the corridor away from the man, with Gail and Hank on his heels. He tried a door along the corridor, found it locked. He half-ran to the next door as the Security man broke into a run, shouting at them. Finally a third door opened. “Quick,” Robert said. “In here!”

  The door slammed in the Security man’s face as he approached it. He jerked it open, tumbled into a small lab room; a single technician looked up from his work, startled.

  “Where did they go?” the detective demanded.

  “Huh? Who?” sa
id the technician.

  “The three of them. They just came in here — ” The detective stared around the small empty room. There were no other doors. Baffled, he began throwing open cabinets. “I saw them come in.”

  The technician snorted. “Nobody’s opened that door all morning.”

  The Security man made a choking sound. Turning back to the corridor door, he thrust it open …

  … and walked into nothing.

  A mile outside the Telcom Laboratory gates a cruising aircar paused to load three passengers, and then buzzed into the sky in a northeasterly direction.

  13

  FOR THE first ten minutes or so, it appeared they had succeeded. The aircar buzzed steadily northward. Robert and Gail got settled in front; Hank Merry sat clutching the arms of the rear seat, looking decidedly green about the gills. He had felt Robert suddenly clutch his arm there in the corridor, and he had closed his eyes as instructed … but he had not been prepared for the sudden lurch, the sudden gaping void of silence and weightlessness, the terrifying sensation of whirling helplessly down into a bottomless pit; and then, equally suddenly, the second lurch and the unexpected blow of solid ground under his feet again as Robert said, “Okay, you can open your eyes now.” His stomach was still churning, and he felt so weak and drained that he couldn’t even ask what on earth had happened.

  Nor could Robert have told him, nor Gail either. Gail had been braced for the jolt when they passed through to the Other Side. For Robert it was an everyday experience. But for a practical scientist who expected two plus two to equal four every time, no matter what, there was no possible preparation that could have helped at all.

  Hank was still trying to get his breath when the little aircar suddenly veered from its course, and began to lose altitude rapidly. The loudspeaker on the dashboard suddenly squawked. “Fasten your seat belts, please, and prepare for landing.”