Edge of Time

by Donald A. Wollheim (as David Grinnell)

  He waved a hand around the balcony that edged the inner dome. Warren and Marge saw again the beams that focused upon the microcosm from all angles, above and below and around the sphere. "Is there a control here for these?" asked Marge.

  Steiner nodded. "Yes, there is a small panel over there by the main telescope, but it cannot turn off the power. It can only modify it or intensify it for our own use. But it cannot be turned off. Only the failure of our atomic pile could do that, and the switches for that are in the powerhouse, not here."

  So they stood there for a half hour, while night fell, and time moved on. They were silent, held as always by the marvel of the man-made universe. Once Marge asked, "Is anybody to be in transferal tonight?"

  Warren shook his head. "Enderby thought it would be dangerous. It would have been interesting to have been on the break-through flight, but too dangerous. The chief thinks that it might affect the mind of the transferee. Besides, he said we can see what happened tomorrow. Those in the micro-universe who stayed behind will have pictures. If we can ever get them out of the mad-house that will be going on on the doomed worlds."

  Marge shuddered. "I can't stand the thought. I would not go tomorrow. I do not want to go again into that universe."

  Warren did not answer this. He understood her feelings very well. He stared into the microcosm. There, living and moving at a pace attuned to a different type of time and space, preparations were going on now for a climactic moment of life. Probably right now the break-through ships were gathering together, bolting down, piling up power vaster than any artificial construction had ever harnessed before, naming their commanders—surely the Oracle of the White Star, that strange eternal being, was among them—and beginning their trip to the farthest rim of their universe.

  The clock on the wall registered ten. Marco, Enderby, and two others came in then. Gathering, thought Warren, like vultures for the prey.

  Then from somewhere outside the dome there came the loud ringing of an alarm bell. They all looked up, stared at each other. Enderby, nearest the door, ran out into the night, suddenly stuck his head back in, and yelled, "Come on! There's a fight at the records hall!"

  With one accord the great dome emptied. Warren and Marge and the scientists poured out through the door, and ran across the dark grass under the star-strewn sky. They could hear shouting, and there was a sharp report of a pistol.

  There seemed to be a crowd of men milling around the records building. More men, thought Warren as he ran, than there were in the whole project. He heard a voice yell something, and with a start he recognized the voice of the guard Jack Quern, but the language was not English.

  Plainly the spy had not waited. He had assembled his ' band, agents of some foreign power, and they had chosen this moment to descend in force, to raid the records hall and carry off those files whose information would make their possessor the most powerful nation for years to come—the very keys of the stars lay in those files.

  There was a confused melee around the hall. Warren got a glimpse of helicopters standing on the grass, their great vanes idly turning. Then the spies had landed from the air; they were already in the records hall; men were trying to run out, burdened down with file cases.

  He caught a glimpse of other men charging out of the trees, saw revolvers in their hands, heard shouts in English. The FBI had indeed staked out the place. There was a shout from one of the helicopters and an exchange of shots. Suddenly one of the strange planes burst into flames as a bullet struck its gas tank.

  In the blaze of light from the burning plane, Warren caught glimpses of men locked in combat. He saw Stanhope lying across the door of the records hall, unconscious, blood smearing his face. It must have been he who had rung the alarm. Strange men were fighting in the doorway of the hall. Gray-haired Enderby and middle-aged Steiner were grappling with a mustached stranger whose arms were piled with files.

  Warren punched blindly at another man who rushed at him. He felt the blow of a fist in his face, and he swung again, feeling his own fist crunch against the stranger's jaw. The other fell away, down and out. Warren looked around hastily to see what else he could do. Another helicopter was burning and now through the door of the records hall he saw a red flickering.

  "Fire!" he yelled, but in the fight, none heard him. In a few more seconds, there was a burst of brilliant flame and the records hall was ablaze.

  The men retreated from the glare, and the fight seemed over. Obviously this was a second objective of the spies; if they could not themselves possess the secrets, then they'd destroy them before others could make use of them. And in this objective they were succeeding.

  Warren looked wildly around as he saw the strangers were fleeing. There would be a chase in the woods all night he knew, but they would not escape. Not any of them. He saw Marco frantically searching the grass in the flickering red fight of the flames, salvaging whatever he could of the files that had already been taken.

  Suddenly the thought occurred to Warren that he had not seen Marge. Where had she been during this fight? Had she been hurt? He looked around, but he did not see her.

  He wondered what time it was. The breakthrough attempt was almost due, but nobody would witness it. Had she started back to the dome, or had she been struck down in the brawl?

  Frantically he looked about, then spotted the figure of a woman running toward one of the darkened buildings. It must be Marge, he thought, and ran after her, calling her name.

  In the light of the fire, the girl turned her head to glance at him, but continued running. He set out after her.

  She reached the squat cement building that housed the atomic pile. Warren saw her fumble at the door, saw it swing open.

  He ran on after her, and the light went on inside the powerhouse. He got to the door. Inside it, the girl had run to the bank of controls that regulated the output of the pile, the dials that registered its flow and current. She was frantically searching over the mass of dials.

  "Marge!" he called again. "What are you doing?"

  She did not answer him. Instead she began hastily pulling plugs from their sockets, and finally found a master switch high up. She reached for it, and Warren started across to her, shouting, "Marge, stop!"

  But she pulled the switch.

  Inside the powerhouse the lights went out. She had cut the outlet between the pile and the rest of the buildings on the project. Outside all the lights went out, those in the main lodge, in the other buildings, and on the road.

  The fire was still raging in the records hall and it is doubtful if anyone noticed the electric failure, what with the shooting in the woods, the seizure of the remaining helicopters by the rescuing guards and the general turmoil.

  Warren reached Marge, intending to try to reconnect the control board in the darkness. The girl grasped his arm, pulled him away. "Come outside, quick!" she said. He was pulled off balance and found himself following her to the door of the powerhouse.

  Outside was a weird vista of flickering red shadows on the dark buildings, the moving silhouettes of men, the round rising dome of the dark hemisphere that housed the microcosm. Above them the sky was brilliantly clear and the stars shone down in mountain-air splendor; and the wide white band of the Milky Way was a road across the heavens.

  "Watch the dome," said Marge in a breathless voice and her fire-lit white arm pointed at it. Warren stood transfixed, staring at the dome, wondering. It must be eleven o'clock, his mind noted with surprise.

  "The power is off," whispered Marge. "There are no restrictive bonds on their universe. They can do it—I know they can do it!"

  Before he realized just who she meant by "they," he was struck dumb. For there a sudden beam of light flashed from the top of the dome. It seemed to bore through like a single beam from a suddenly opened window—but there was no window or opening there.

  Now a sudden vibration shook the air, an eerie ringing, singing note, and he saw the white beam widen, then break into many beams. This was followed
at once by a rising excruciating pitch of sound, then an odd, almost noiseless puff that made his eardrums hurt as if pressure had suddenly been put on them.

  He saw a little silver sliver shoot up the beam, a tiny splinter of metal. Then another and another, and still more. And the splinters of silver were rising into the sky, growing bigger as they rose, swelling into the air and the sky of the starlit night.

  Now a whole cloud of splinters burst from the top of the dome, like a stream of sparks from a mighty log cast on glowing embers. As these splinters rose they grew, and it could be seen that they were ships—great silvery ships that rapidly expanded as they raced upward into the night sky.

  In a little while it was over, the beam was gone, the night dark again, save for the dying embers of the burning records hall. There was a memory in Warren's brain of great dark shadows against the sky, of the stars being blotted out by the shapes of a strange armada of vessels that seemed momentarily to darken the sky from horizon to horizon before vanishing into the glowing vastnesses of the Milky Way.

  Marge and Warren stood silent until the last shadow on the stars had disappeared from sight and the night was quiet again.

  "They made it!" said Marge triumphantly. "I told them they'd make it! I promised them a new universe, an infinite universe, and now they're saved."

  Warren turned to her, "You promised them?" he whispered, puzzled. "You?"

  She turned her face to him, the light of the infinite stars in her eyes. "I was here to help them. I, alone."

  "I don't understand," said Warren, still staring at her. "Who are you to help them? You are Marge McElroy, and your place is here. Where's your camera?"

  The girl looked at him, her face glowing. "I'm Marge McElroy, now and forever. But I was also someone else. I was she who was known as the Oracle of the White Star."

  Warren shook his head in confusion. "How could that be? The Oracle was a hundred women in succession, a hundred alien women."

  Marge smiled. "I became the first Oracle and she was a brilliant woman, a true genius. She had the most powerful mind of them all. It was she who transferred her mind back to me here; it was her mind that occupied me, that trained me to think and see things as they were, and it never transferred back. The Oracle was in two places at once.

  I was Marge McElroy and at the same time I kept the mental phasing with whoever was the Oracle. I never lost contact.

  "You see, while you and the rest were spying in the microcosm, I was their spy here. The Oracle of the White Star was always I. What Marge knew, she knew—and her knowledge spanned a hundred generations, because I was always there."

  She smiled, and shook her head. "But now it's finished. Somewhere on one of these ships an Oracle of the White Star rides. But she's no longer psychic; I've lost contact with her. She is no more the Oracle, but just a confused mystic whose influence will soon fade.

  "Well, so be it. I've given them a new and greater universe, and now they can spread out and live in all its wonder and marvels. Nothing is lost of our records. . . . Because the real living records are up there, and when the time comes, well meet them and become part of them.

  "As for me," she turned to him, "my life is here on Earth. We know of the things that have gone up in smoke on this mountain, Warren. Will you help me now to make a future for us both?"

  Warren looked at her and he did not see any deep-eyed Oracle with bulging brow, nor an eternal priestess with miraculous insight. Instead he saw the sweet smiling face of a young girl, vibrant with youth, whose eyes had witnessed glory even as had his. And without further thought or unnecessary conversation, he simply bent down and kissed that face.