Second Stage Lensmen

by Edward E Smith

  Nor did he pick a crew of his own sycophants. Instead, he chose the five highest-ranking privates of the battalion to accompany him upon this supposedly extremely dangerous mission; apparently entirely unaware that two of them belonged to the colonel, two to the general, and one to the captain who had taken his place.

  The colonel wished Major Gannel luck—verbally—even while hoping fervently that THE Lensman would make cold meat of him in a hurry; and Kinnison gravely gave his well-wisher thanks as he set out. He did not, however, go near any communications lines; although his spying crew did not realize the fact. They did not realize anything; they did not know even that they became unconscious within five minutes after leaving Thrale.

  They remained unconscious while the speedster in which they were was drawn into the Dauntless’ capacious hold. In the Patrol ship’s sick-bay, under expert care, they remained unconscious during the entire duration of their stay on board.

  The Patrol pilots picked up Kandron’s flying vessel with little difficulty; and, nullifiers full out, followed it easily. When the zwilnik ship slowed down to feel for the vortex the Dauntless slowed also, and baffled her driving jets as she sneaked up to the very edge of electro-detector range. When the objective disappeared from three-dimensional space the point of vanishment was marked precisely, and up to that point the Patrol ship flashed in seconds.

  The regular driving blasts were cut off, the special generators were cut in. Then, as the force-fields of the ship reacted against those of the Boskonian “shore” station, the Patrolmen felt again in all their gruesome power the appallingly horrible sensations of inter-dimensional acceleration. For that sensation is, literally, indescribable. A man in good training can overcome sea-sickness, air-sickness, and space-sickness. He can overcome the nausea and accustom himself to the queasily terrifying endless-fall sensation of weightlessness. He can become inured to the physical and mental ills accompanying inertialessness. No man ever has, however, been able to get used to inter-dimensional acceleration.

  It is best likened to a compression; not as a whole, but atom by atom. A man feels as though he were being twisted—corkscrewed in some monstrously obscure fashion which permits him neither to move from his place nor to remain where he is. It is a painless but utterly revolting transformation, progressing in a series of waves; a re-arrangement, a writhing, crawling distortion, an incomprehensibly impossible extrusion of each ultimate particle of his substance in an unknowable, ordinarily non-existent direction.

  The period of acceleration over, the Dauntless began to travel at uniform velocity along whatever course it was that the tube took. The men, although highly uncomfortable and uneasy, could once more move about and work. Sir Austin Cardynge in particular was actually happy and eager as he flitted from one to another of the automatic recording instruments upon his special panel. He resembled more closely than ever a lean, gray tomcat, Kinnison thought—he almost expected to see him begin to lick his whiskers and purr.

  “You see, my ignorant young friend,” the scientist almost did purr as one of the recording pens swung wildly across the ruled paper, “it is as I told you—the lack of exact data upon even one tiny factor of this extremely complex phenomenon is calamitous. While my notes were apparently complete and were certainly accurate, our experimental tubes did not function perfectly. The time factor was irreconcilable—completely so, in every aspect, even that of departure from and return to normal space—and it is unthinkable that time, one of the fundamental units, is or can be intrinsically variable…”

  “You think so?” Kinnison broke in. “Look at that,” pointing to the ultimate of timepieces, Cardynge’s own triplex chronometer. “Number One says we’ve been in this tube for an hour, Number Two says a little over nine minutes, and according to Number Three we won’t be starting for twenty minutes yet—it must be running backwards—let’s see you comb that out of your whiskers!”

  “Oh-h…ah…a-hum.” But only momentarily was Sir Austin taken aback. “Ah, I was right all the time!” he cackled gleefully. “I thought it was practically impossible for me to commit an error or to overlook any possibilities, and I have now proved that I did not. Time, in this hyper-spatial region or condition, is intrinsically variable, and in major degree!”

  “And what does that get you?” Kinnison asked, pointedly.

  “Much, my impetuous youngster, much,” Cardynge replied. “We observe, we note facts. From the observations and facts we theorize and we deduce; thus arriving very shortly at the true inwardness of time.”

  “You hope,” the Lensman snorted, dubiously; and in his skepticism he was right and Sir Austin was wrong. For the actual nature and mechanism of time remained, and still constitute, a mystery, or at least an unsolved problem. The Arisians—perhaps—understand time; no other race does.

  To some of the men, then, and to some of the clocks and other time-measuring devices, the time seemed—or actually was?—very long; to other and similar beings and mechanisms it seemed—or was—short. Short or long, however, the Dauntless did not reach the Boskonian end of the hyper-spatial tube.

  In mid-flight there came a crunching, twisting cloonk! and an abrupt reversal of the inexplicably horrible inter-dimensional acceleration—a deceleration as sickeningly disturbing, both physically and mentally, as the acceleration had been.

  While within the confines of the hyper-spatial tube every eye of the Dauntless had been blind. To every beam upon every frequency, visible or invisible, ether-borne or carried upon the infinitely faster waves of the sub-ether, the murk was impenetrable. Every plate showed the same mind-numbing blankness; a vague, eerily-shifting, quasi-solid blanket of formless, textureless grayness. No lightness or darkness, no stars or constellation or nebulae, no friendly, deep-space blackness—nothing.

  Deceleration ceased; the men felt again the wonted homeliness and comfort of normal pseudo-gravity. Simultaneously the gray smear of the visiplates faded away into commonplace areas of jetty black, pierced by the brilliantly dimensionless vari-colored points of light which were the familiar stars of their own familiar space.

  But were they familiar? Was that our galaxy, or anything like it? They were not. It was not. Kinnison stared into his plate, aghast.

  He would not have been surprised to have emerged into three-dimensional space anywhere within the Second Galaxy. In that case, he would have seen a Milky Way; and from its shape, apparent size, and texture he could have oriented himself fairly closely in a few minutes. But the Dauntless was not within any lenticular galaxy—nowhere was there any sign of a Milky Way!

  He would not have been really surprised to have found himself and his ship out in open inter-galactic space. In that case he would have seen a great deal of dead-black emptiness, blotched with lenticular bodies which were in fact galaxies. Orientation would then have been more difficult; but, with the aid of the Patrol charts, it could have been accomplished. But here there were no galaxies—no nebulae of any kind!

  CHAPTER

  18

  Prime Minister Fossten

  ERE, UPON A BACKGROUND OF a blackness so intense as to be obviously barren of nebular material, there lay a multitude of blazingly resplendent stars—and nothing except stars. A few hundred were of a visual magnitude of about minus three. Approximately the same number were of minus two or thereabouts, and so on down; but there did not seem to be a star or other celestial object in that starkly incredible sky of an apparent magnitude greater than about plus four.

  “What do you make of this, Sir Austin?” Kinnison asked, quietly. “It’s got me stopped like a traffic light.”

  The mathematician ran toward him and the Lensman stared. He had never known Cardynge to hurry—in fact, he was not really running now. He was walking, even though his legs were fairly twinkling in their rapidity of motion. As he approached Kinnison his pace gradually slowed to normal.

  “Oh—time must be cock-eyed here, too,” the Lensman observed. “Look over there—see how fast those fellows are moving, an
d how slow those others over that way are?”

  “Ah, yes. Interesting—intensely interesting. Truly, a most remarkable and intriguing phenomenon,” the fascinated mathematician enthused.

  “But that wasn’t what I meant. Swing this plate—it’s on visual—around outside, so as to get the star aspect and distribution. What do you think of it?”

  “Peculiar—I might almost say unique,” the scientist concluded, after his survey. “Not at all like any normal configuration or arrangement with which I am familiar. We could perhaps speculate, but would it not be preferable to secure data first? Say by approaching a solar system and conducting systematic investigations?”

  “Uh-huh,” and again Kinnison stared at the wispy little physicist in surprise. Here was a man! “You’re certainly something to tie to, ace, do you know it?” he asked, admiringly. Then, as Cardynge gazed at him questioningly, uncomprehendingly:

  “Skip it. Can you feel my thought, Henderson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shoot us across to one of those nearer stars, stop, and go inert.”

  “QX, chief.” The pilot obeyed.

  And in the instant of inerting, the visiplate into which the two men stared went black. The thousands of stars studding the sky a moment before had disappeared as though they had never been.

  “Why…what… How in all the yellow hells of space can that happen?” Kinnison blurted.

  Without a word Cardynge reached out and snapped the plate’s receiver over from “visual” to “ultra”, whereupon the stars reappeared as suddenly as they had vanished.

  “Something’s screwy somewhere!” the Lensman protested. “We can’t have an inert velocity greater than that of light—it’s impossible!”

  “Few things, if any, can be said definitely to be impossible; and everything is relative, not absolute,” the old scientist declared, pompously. “This space, for instance. You have not yet perceived, I see, even that you are not in the same three-dimensional space in which we have heretofore existed.”

  Kinnison gulped. He was going to protest about that, too, but in the face of Cardynge’s unperturbed acceptance of the fact he did not quite dare to say what he had in mind.

  “That is better,” the old man declaimed. “Do not get excited—to do so dulls the mind. Take nothing for granted, do not jump at conclusions—to commit either of those errors will operate powerfully against success. Working hypotheses, young man, must be based upon accurately determined facts; not upon mere guesses, superstitions, or figments of personal prejudices.”

  “Bub—bub—but… QX—skip it!” Nine-tenths of the Dauntless’ crew would have gone out of control at the impact of the knowledge of what had happened; even Kinnison’s powerful mind was shaken. Cardynge, however, was—not seemed to be, but actually was—as calm and as self-contained as though he were in his own quiet study. “Explain it to me, will you please, in words of as nearly one syllable as possible?”

  “Our looser thinkers have for centuries speculated upon the possibility of an entire series of different spaces existing simultaneously, side by side in a hypothetical hyper-continuum. I have never indulged in such time-wasting; but now that actual corroborative data have become available, I regard it as a highly fruitful field of investigation. Two extremely significant facts have already become apparent; the variability of time and the non-applicability of our so-called ‘laws’ of motion. Different spaces, different laws, it would seem.”

  “But when we cut our generators in that other tube we emerged into our own space,” Kinnison argued. “How do you account for that?”

  “I do not as yet try to account for it!” Cardynge snapped. “Two very evident possibilities should already be apparent, even to your feeble brain. One, that at the moment of release your vessel happened to be situated within a fold of our own space. Two, that the collapse of the ship’s force-fields always returns it to its original space, while the collapse of those of the shore station always forces it into some other space. In the latter case, it would be reasonable to suppose that the persons or beings at the other end of the tube may have suspected that we were following Kandron, and, as soon as he landed, cut off their forces deliberately to throw us out of space. They may even have learned that persons of lesser ability, so treated, never return. Do not allow yourself to be at all impressed by any of these possibilities, however, as the truth may very well lie in something altogether different. Bear it in mind that we have as yet very little data upon which to formulate any theories, and that the truth can be revealed only by a very careful, accurate, and thorough investigation. Please note also that I would surely have discovered and evaluated all these unknowns during the course of my as yet incomplete study of our own hyper-spatial tubes; that I am merely continuing here a research in which I have already made noteworthy progress.”

  Kinnison really gasped at that—the guy was certainly terrific! He called the chief pilot. “Go free, Hen, and start flitting for a planet—we’ve got to sit down somewhere before we can start back home. When you find one, land free. Stay free, and watch your Bergs—I don’t have to tell you what will happen if they quit on us.”

  Then Thorndyke. “Verne? Break out some personal neutralizers. We’ve got a job of building to do—inertialess,” and he explained to both men in flashing thoughts what had happened and what they had to do.

  “You grasp the basic idea, Kinnison,” Cardynge approved, “that it is necessary to construct a station apart from the vessel in which we propose to return to our normal environment. You err grievously, however, in your insistence upon the necessity of discovering a planet, satellite, asteroid, or other similar celestial body upon which to build it.”

  “Huh?” Kinnison demanded.

  “It is eminently possible—yes, even practicable—for us to use the Dauntless as an anchorage for the tube and for us to return in the lifeboats,” Cardynge pointed out.

  “What? Abandon this ship? Waste all that time rebuilding all the boats?”

  “It is preferable, of course, and more expeditious, to find a planet, if possible,” the scientist conceded. “However, it is plain that it is in no sense necessary. Your reasoning is fallacious, your phraseology is deplorable. I am correcting you in the admittedly faint hope of teaching you scientific accuracy of thought and of statement.”

  “Wow! Wottaman!” Kinnison breathed to himself, as, heroically, he “skipped it”.

  Somewhat to Kinnison’s surprise—he had more than half expected that planets would be non-existent in that space—the pilots did find a solid world upon which to land. It was a peculiar planet indeed. It did not move right, it did not look right, it did not feel right. It was waterless, airless, desolate; a senseless jumble of jagged fragments, mostly metallic. It was neither hot nor cold—indeed, it seemed to have no temperature of its own at all. There was nothing whatever right about it, Kinnison declared.

  “Oh, yes, there is!” Thorndyke contradicted. ‘Time is constant here, whatever its absolute rate may be, these metals are nice to work with, and some of this other stuff will make insulation. Or hadn’t you thought of that? Which would be faster, cutting down an intrinsic velocity of fifteen lights to zero or building the projector out of native materials? And if you match intrinsics, what will happen when you hit our normal space again?

  “Plenty, probably—uh-huh, faster to use the stuff that belongs here. Careful, though, fella!”

  And care was indeed necessary; extreme care that not a particle of matter from the ship was used in the construction and that not a particle of the planet’s substance by any mischance got aboard the space-ship.

  The actual work was simple enough. Cardynge knew exactly what had to be done. Thorndyke knew exactly how to do it, as he had built precisely similar generators for the experimental tubes upon Tellus. He had a staff of experts; the Dauntless carried a machine shop and equipment second to none. Raw material was abundant, and it was an easy matter to block out an inertialess room within which the projectors and mo
tors were built. And, after they were built, they worked.

  It was not the work, then, but the strain which wore Kinnison down. The constant, wearing strain of incessant vigilance to be sure that the Bergenholms and the small units of the personal neutralizers did not falter for a single instant. He did not lose a man, but again and again there flashed into his mind the ghastly picture of one of his boys colliding with the solid metal of the planet at a relative velocity fifteen times that of light! The strain of the endless checking and re-checking to make certain that there was no exchange of material, however slight, between the ship and the planet.

  Above all, the strain of knowing a thing which, apparently, no one else suspected; that Cardynge, with all his mathematical knowledge, was not going to be able to find his way back! He had never spoken of this to the scientist. He did not have to. He knew that without a knowledge of the fundamental distinguishing characteristics of our normal space—a knowledge even less to be expected than that a fish should know the fundamental equations and structure of water—they never could, save by sheerest accident, return to their own space. And as Cardynge grew more and more tensely, unsocially immersed in his utterly insoluble problem, the more and more uneasy the Gray Lensman became. But this last difficulty was resolved first, and in a totally unexpected fashion.

  “Ah, Kinnison of Tellus, here you are—I have been considering your case for some twenty nine of your seconds,” a deep, well-remembered voice resounded within his brain.

  “Mentor!” he exclaimed, and at the sheer shock of his relief he came very near indeed to fainting. “Thank Klono and Noshabkeming you found us! How did you do it? How do we get ourselves out of here?”

  “Finding you was elementary,” the Arisian replied, calmly. “Since you were not in your own environment you must be elsewhere. It required but little thought to perceive what was a logical, in fact an inevitable, development. Such being the case, it needed very little additional effort to determine what had happened, and how, and why; likewise precisely where you must now be. As for departure therefrom, your mechanical preparations are both correct and adequate. I could give you the necessary information, but it is rather technically specialized and not negligible in amount; and since your brain is not of infinite capacity, it is better not to fill any part of it with mathematics for which you will have no subsequent use. Put yourself en rapport, therefore, with Sir Austin Cardynge. I will follow.”