“Matter into energy; energy into matter,” Martin Senior confirmed calmly.
“So?”
“Just this. We must have left something behind when we departed. I mean, a great chunk of Earth couldn’t vanish abruptly without something taking its place.”
“Possibly the interchange was absolute,” Martin Senior mused. “By that I mean that we abruptly changed places with another part of the universe; therefore whatever was here is now where we were. Maybe it was empty space, maybe a star, maybe anything. If a star, then Earth by now will be a cinder.”
Silence. Jerry turned and looked at the “honor counter” with the banked-up shelves behind it. He gave a sigh.
“Well, there’s a certain amount of food and drink here which will keep us going for awhile. When it runs out that’s the finish.”
“To my mind …” Martin Senior got to his feet. “To my mind I think we should explore this desert island segment of ours more thoroughly.”
“Okay,” Jerry nodded. “I’ll come with you —”
“No you won’t!” Edna interrupted. “You’re staying right by me, Jerry! I’m scared! Mr. Stone’s too old to be of any help if anything happens and —”
“I’ll go,” Lucille said, with a touch of contempt, getting to her feet. “That is if you think a woman is capable of revealing any commonsense, Mr. Senior?”
Martin Senior only smiled sardonically and then opened the pavilion door, following Lucille out into the blaze of the alien sun. They descended the steps with queer, bouncing movements and then began to cross the grass together.
“I could laugh,” Martin Senior exclaimed, after a moment. “I really could!”
“So could I, for another reason.” Lucille gave him a quick look. “I’ve about three months to live and find myself here! I never thought I’d watch others die around me at the same time.”
“You seem mighty sure that you’re going to push up the daisies!”
“That’s rather a fatuous remark here, isn’t it? And of course I’m sure. No reason why the medics should lie to me.”
“Not necessarily lie, but they’re not infallible. Believe only in yourself and nobody else. That’s my motto.”
“I wish I could, but I’m not made that way.” Lucille looked about her towards the very near horizon. Then: “And what was it was going to make you laugh?”
“Just the fact that I’d planned to murder a girl tonight! Now she’s light centuries away and perfectly safe. A classic example of ‘Man proposes …’ I suppose.”
“You? Commit a murder? I don’t believe it!”
“Thanks for the compliment. And, Miss Grant, unless I am permitted to call you Lucille, we are now leaving the pavilion right behind us.”
Lucille stopped and glanced rearward. Then she gave a start. The top of the pavilion roof was visible, but that was all. The rest of it was below the horizon. “This is preposterous!” she exclaimed, startled.
“Not a bit. We just happen to have walked beyond the horizon point — as seen from the pavilion, that is. Notice the ground? The grass has finished and instead we have this stuff. Soil, but flat as though a roller had been over it.” “So it is!” Lucille looked at it intently. “Looks as if a giant knife had cut it off.”
They began moving again, and behind them the pavilion slowly vanished from view. They were now traversing a twilit plain of perfectly smooth soil on which no living thing grew. Overhead were the stars, but no sun.
“This segment we’re on is only quite small,” Martin Senior said presently. “At the moment we’re on its underside, which is why the sun’s gone.”
“Which means we’re upside down compared to our position in the pavilion?”
“Of course, but we’re not aware of it because gravity keeps us apparently upright. No doubt of one thing, this clean-cut segment points to colossal elemental forces. This piece of Earth wasn’t just ripped out: it was sheared off!”
“Couldn’t be!”
“It could, though I’m not scientist enough to imagine how. Did you ever see anything so absolutely flat?”
They gazed over the expanse to the near horizon. Not a hillock, not an undulation, anywhere. Overhead the strange, unknown stars and the everlasting black of space itself. Somewhere, faded as a forgotten memory, was the world from which they had come.
“We can assess this by degrees,” Martin Senior said, thinking. “We’re on a chunk of Earth approximately three miles long by — say, two wide. It makes no pretence of being circular: it’s plainly and simply a chunk. The upper part is normal with grass, trees, the pavilion, and so on: the under part is sheared off where the mysterious forces went to work. Air we still have — but it can’t last.”
“Why not?” Lucille asked, that depthless wonder still in her eyes.
“For one thing the gravity is so weak it won’t hold the air for long; for another space will suck it out gradually. Also, the best of the sun will do its share to dissipating it. How long we have I don’t know.” Martin Senior surveyed the stars. “They’re very bright. Our atmosphere here is desperately thin — or maybe you’d noticed? That tightness about the chest?”
“My chest’s always tight anyway so I wouldn’t know —” Lucille broke off in a fit of coughing. When at last it had subsided she was surprised to find Martin Senior’s arm about her shoulders.
“Better?” he asked, with a sort of rough kindness.
“Uh-uh: it comes in spasms. We’d better be getting back and tell the others, hadn’t we?”
Martin Senior nodded, and they retraced their way. They found the others still in the pavilion, Edna being in the midst of rationing what food there was. She glanced up at the two entered.
“Well?”
Martin Senior shrugged. “Nothing very exciting — except proof of the fact that our island home was pitched here by scientific forces …” and he briefly added the details.
“Very helpful,” Edna commented sourly, slapping down a pot of shrimp paste. “At least you both managed to cultivate a good sunburn, anyhow!”
“Edna, for heaven’s sake!” Jerry gave her an entreating look.
“For heaven’s sake what? I can speak my mind, can’t I?”
“I have the feeling,” Jonathan Stone remarked, his spare form reclining in the wicker chair by the sunlit window, “that Miss Drew is not at all happy in her present surroundings!”
“Are you?” Edna demanded.
“Quite — but then I have reached the age where I can be philosophical. Out here we’re somehow right on the rim of Eternity, and I have the hope that before I die I might even look upon the face of my Creator.”
Because of his age, Jonathan Stone’s statement did not sound at all blasphemous: indeed, the serene expression on his rugged old face made it appear that he really believed his wish would be granted.
“To get to more practical things,” Martin Senior said bluntly, “we’ve fallen into an orbit. I’ve been watching the stars, and they’re changing position very slightly whereas the sun doesn’t move in the least. That suggests that we’re flying round this sun and keeping one face to it. Fortunate it happens to be this one or we’d be completely in the dark.”
“We are — utterly!” Edna Drew’s mouth was drooping peevishly. “It’s cold, frightening, and desolate. If there were not you others here I’d go mad!”
“Put my sweater on …” Jerry handed it across.
“No thanks. I can look after myself. Serves me right for putting on this fool tennis frock without sleeves in it. But how was I to know this would happen?”
“We none of us knew,” Jonathan Stone said. “‘In the twinkling of an eye —’!”
“So you said before,” Edna interrupted rudely. “Surely, Mr. Stone, at your age, you can contribute something more useful to our dilemma than mere Scriptures?”
“I am afraid not, Miss Drew. I am too old physically to do anything, and mentally I am more preoccupied with the Hereafter than the present.”
&n
bsp; “As to the coldness …” Martin Senior reached down a packet of cigarettes from the shelf. “That’s caused by the air here being unpleasantly thin. It causes rapid radiation of bodily warmth and causes the surface skin to chill quickly. You won’t catch cold, though, because that takes germs — and I doubt if they’re very prevalent on this remote chunk of Earth; or even if they are the thin air won’t encourage them.”
Edna threw herself onto one of the counter stools and looked moodily in front of her. She ignored the cigarette packet Martin Senior held towards her: Lucille also declined as another violent attack of coughing brought her to the point of exhaustion.
“I think,” Edna said curtly, when the spasm had finished, “that it might be healthier outside. Come on, Jerry!”
“Why?” He was squatting comfortably on the floor, smoking one of the cigarettes Martin Senior had offered him.
“Because I refuse to venture out alone.”
Jerry sighed and scrambled to his feet. He paused as he went past Lucille. She was still gasping for breath and the paroxysms had brought tears to her wide gray eyes.
“Sorry, Lucille, for what Edna said,” he murmured. “I don’t think she meant it. Sort of prides herself on being outspoken.”
“Of course,” Lucille smiled. “If I could help myself coughing I would.”
“For heaven’s sake come on and stop muttering!” Edna complained — so Jerry hurried quickly to her side and then followed her to the open. The three left behind gazed after them.
“Not ideally suited, are they?” Martin Senior asked cynically.
“Few people are,” Jonathan Stone sighed. “I think they’d get along all right if they could compose the antagonisms in their natures. Each has something the other cannot assimilate, and until they find out what it is they’ll always be at loggerheads.”
“About the sunburn we’ve got —” Lucille seemed to have been thinking, and she was now inspecting the undoubted chocolate brown on the backs of her normally pale hands. “Isn’t that caused by ultra-violet radiation?”
“Normally, yes,” Martin Senior confirmed. “This new sun we’ve got probably radiates ultra-violet the same as our own does, but here we get the dose extra strong because of the thin air. On the other hand, it may not be ultra violet at all.”
“It must be to produce sunburn!” Lucille insisted.
“Not necessarily. Cosmic rays could produce the same effect, and much more rapidly. Indeed, considering the speed at which we have got bronzed I’m inclined to think cosmic rays are at the back of it.”
“But they’re dangerous!” Lucille exclaimed. “I’ve read about them! They burn flesh and blood and go right through everything except lead.”
“True enough — in the naked state. We have some atmosphere to shield us —” Martin Senior broke off and then nodded towards the almost sleeping Jonathan Stone. “There’s our proof! Mr. Stone is becoming sunburned, too, and he hasn’t been outside the pavilion yet — except at the very start. That shows the cosmic radiations are passing through this pavilion, something which ultra-violet cannot do. Come to think of it, Jerry and Edna looked remarkably healthy, but I put it down to their having been playing tennis in the sun.”
“That sounds an awful long way off now,” Lucille whispered.
After a while Jerry and Edna returned. They were still looking at odds with each other — and the increase in their “sunburn” was most marked. Moodily they came into the pavilion and then closed the door.
“According to my watch it’s half-past twelve,” Jerry said. “Back home that would be long past bedtime and by all the rules I ought to feel sleepy. But I don’t — and neither does Edna.”
Martin Senior looked vaguely surprised. “Come to think of it, I don’t either. How about you, Lucille?”
“A bit — but not as much as usual.”
“The only one who seems to be running to schedule is Mr. Stone,” Jerry commented, glancing at him. “Fast asleep!”
“Don’t you believe it, boy!” The old man stirred and looked at him. “Because I have my eyes closed doesn’t say I’m asleep. Matter of fact I don’t feel tired. In fact quite the contrary. Surprising thing, but since we landed here I’ve felt immeasurably younger.”
“The air perhaps,” Edna said, but she did not sound too certain of herself “It’s a bit thin, but immensely exhilarating. I don’t feel cold any more either.”
There was silence for a moment. Though as yet none was prepared to admit it — except perhaps for Jonathan Stone — they were all conscious of alerted senses, of the slow dissolution of that stagnation of the mind that more or less pervades every human being through the action of impurities in blood. Thinking seemed no longer a conscious effort: the concentration flew from one topic to another with astonishing facility.
“Sunburn and sharpened wits, eh?” Martin Senior asked at length. “Only one answer to that — the inflow of cosmic radiation affecting us all.”
Jonathan Stone chuckled half to himself. “Good for you, son! You have your answer — and I have mine.”
“You mean you have a different solution?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s a solution, but at any rate it’s a suggestion. Just here, in this unknown region of space, we may be much closer to the Ultimate than we were on Earth. And by the Ultimate I mean the Artisan of the Universe, the Creator of all that is —”
“He’s off again,” Edna sighed, sitting down. “Just as I thought we were going to pin something down.”
The old man looked at her reprovingly. “Trouble with you youngsters is you don’t pay half enough attention to spiritual values —”
“For myself,” Martin Senior interrupted, with an immense calm, “I’m an incisive, calculating man with no interest in spiritual values. You could call me an atheist even, and be quite correct. Therefore I say that the presence of cosmic rays, which are everywhere in the Universe, is the main cause of the slow change which is coming upon us. It is not, I contend, because we are nearer to some hypothetical Creator.”
“You have your view, and I have mine,” Stone smiled. “The Bible tells us that the power of the Creator is everywhere — everywhere! So are cosmic radiations. Is it impossible to draw a connection between the two? No scientist will positively tell you whence cosmic rays emanate because he doesn’t know the answer. That they are caused by the breakdown or build-up of energy in remote parts of space doesn’t settle the issue. They have always been there: they always will be there — steady, unvarying, ubiquitous. They are material —”
“Therefore not spiritual,” Martin Senior snapped.
“Not necessarily. We are mortal beings accustomed to interpret everything from its material basis. The power of a Creator might, to us, appear as cosmic radiation — destructive, deadly. To one with clearer vision they could represent the beneficent outflow of a Creator, and here at this remote point of space we may be nearer to that source of all-intellect, all-power, than ever before. Also, being segregated from our own kind with the disturbance of their myriads of conflicting thoughts, we are able to think and apprehend clearly for the first time in our lives. At least I am.”
Silence. Lucille stared blankly, too astonished to make any comment. Edna was smiling cynically yet with a half doubt in her eyes. Martin Senior lighted a cigarette and sucked in a mouthful of fumes. Jerry looked about him and then rubbed the back of his neck.
“Frankly, I don’t get it,” he confessed.
The old man opened his pocket Bible and considered it. “You would, son, if you’d studied this a bit more often. No, no, I’m not censuring you. At your age I was just as carefree. You still have time to catch up.”
Edna got to her feet with the decisiveness of disgust. She gave Jerry a glance. “About time we had something to eat, isn’t it?”
Jerry hesitated. “I suppose so, but somehow I — I don’t want it. I’m not hungry. That isn’t the aftermath of shock either: it’s just that I never felt less inclined for food in all my lif
e.”
Edna looked at the others. “What about you folks?”
Each one shook their heads, at which she moved to the nearby piled-up rations and began to make selections. Then after a while she paused and slowly shook her head. She turned, a puzzled light in her dark eyes.
“Whatever it is it’s got me too. I’ve no appetite — nor am I thirsty either.”
“Now you know how the Ancients managed to fast for weeks on end without harm,” Jonathan Stone commented. “They had the trick of utilizing spiritual power for their sustenance — an art submerged with the materialistic centuries which followed.”
“Which, interpreted, means that the cosmic rays are feeding us?” Martin Senior asked bluntly. “Just as they fed the Ancients?”
“Your interpretation is correct, Mr. Senior.”
“It’s crazy! Idiotic!” Martin Senior spat out his cigarette and then stamped on it. “Cosmic rays destroy: they don’t feed!”
“None of us is destroyed, though,” Lucille pointed out gently. “In fact we all look a good deal better than when we arrived here. How do you account for that?”
“They just can’t be cosmic rays, that’s all. Something else.”
“You don’t believe that,” Jerry said deliberately. “Out here in these wastes nothing else but cosmic rays could affect us. We wouldn’t be as affected as we are by ultra-violet, seventh-octave radiations, or any of those.”
Edna came forward in surprise. “How in the world do you know all that? I never heard you make a scientific statement in your life before.”
“I — I don’t quite know. It sort of came to me.”
“The whole thing is perfectly simple to analyze …” Jonathan Stone rose from the wicker chair — not awkwardly under the cramp of age, but with the litheness of a young man. “Cosmic radiation and Creative power are one and the same thing: that is my contention. Scientists aver that cosmic radiation, in the Beginning, acted as a catalyst on certain chemical substances, and so life began. Very well: they’re entitled to their material conception of life’s beginning. We are also told that the Creator brought life into being by His emanations and beneficence. The two things — cosmic rays material, and emanations spiritual — could be one and the same. Science proves cosmic rays to be destructive to life. But suppose everybody had been educated through the centuries to believe that they are beneficial to life? What then?”
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 37
