The Third Science Fiction Megapack

by E. C. Tubb

  Without commenting, though his face was grim, Grifa hurried along the smoothness towards the solitary point of light, which shone like a star. Then presently he slowed up, Nal beside him, as both of them became conscious of surging waves beating about them again.

  “There’s only one answer to this,” Grifa snapped. “That converter of yours is working—too well! We’d better get out of its influence. We seem to be in a direct line. That point of light is where the laboratory ought to be.”

  “I’m going on, sir,” Nal said grimly. “I left a girl in that laboratory—Mydia Fro. I intend to marry her. I’ve got to find her.”

  “You left a—”

  Nal did not wait to hear what more his outraged superior might have to say. He sped down the black, shining vista towards the solitary spot of light, oblivious to whatever danger there might be. In time be realized that the entire front of the research laboratory had disappeared and that the floors were visible sectionally with that glowing ball on the topmost floor of all.

  Nal raced through the entranceway of the building and up the stairs, finally burst into the laboratory itself. All the lights were out. What illumination there was came from that baleful ball atop its glittering pole. It was bright amethyst in color, setting up a tautening static in the air.

  Appalled, Nal fell back before that baleful circle. He looked about him anxiously. Of Mydia there was no sign. Breathing hard he raced over to the switchboard and found the jammed button. He beat on it frenziedly—and then stopped, his attention arrested by a new and horrifying sight. At his feet lay a perfectly severed forearm, appearing just as though it were cast in wax. He did not touch it. He just stared bewildered.

  Then, his rugged face ghastly in the lavender glow, Grifa came to his side, panting for breath.

  “Too late now for recriminations, Nal,” he said. “You say there was a woman in here? Obviously that arm belonged to her. It must have been severed by a shift in electronic paths—cleanly, painlessly. In other words, the probability that her forearm belonged to the rest of her arm suddenly ceased to exist and the forearm materialized elsewhere—on the floor here.”

  “But where is she?” Nal panted, staring around. “What’s become of her?”

  “I don’t know, any more than one can ever predict where a probability wave is. As to what happened, this button—”

  The First Physicist turned on it savagely—but at the same instant he found himself quite unhurt on a rising stretch of ground outside the city. Nal was beside him, not a lock of his hair disturbed, not one shade of alteration m his horrified expression.

  Grifa did not say anything immediately. He was contemplating the city and grappling with profound issues at the same time. From this rocky eminence it looked as though the city were splashed with inky holes where buildings had utterly vanished and left smooth, mirror-like ground. There was a disturbance in the air too, a wraith or so of wind, which in a climate automatically controlled at dead level calmness could only mean one thing—the Climatic machines had been affected.

  “Nal,” the First Physicist said finally, gripping the young man’s arm, “you’ve released something which we can’t stop—or at least that woman Mydia Fro must have done so. The button jammed and the converter ran on and on. That means that all the time it runs electron waves extend their area, in the way you outlined, and their extension shifts other waves, and so on ad infinitum.

  “The whole mass of probabilities which make up matter as we know it is in a state of complete flux. For instance, while we were in the laboratory the probability that we were there collapsed before the probability that we were here—and here we came, on the instant, without any conception of transit. That, I imagine, is explainable by an electron leaping from one orbit to another without ever being in the space between. No gulf is there to be crossed. One state dissolves and another appears, remote from the original state.

  “At any moment,” Grifa said somberly, “the probability that we are here may collapse again and we may be—anywhere. In the former state matter was more or less stable. Now it is stable no longer.” Grifa clenched his fists and stared upwards at fast forming clouds. “I said it was something we couldn’t stop,” he muttered. “But we’ve got to! It can mean the end of the world—the probability, even, that the world itself does not exist, or anything upon it. Come with me,” he finished curtly, jerking his gray head.

  Nal said nothing, but he turned and turned and followed the savant down the rocky slope which led to the pock-marked city. They entered it by skirting its edges, avoiding the streets that were now thronged with surging, chattering people trying to discover what was happening. Many of the buildings still stood unharmed, including the one in which Grifa had his headquarters and, deep down in the basement, his private laboratory.

  He entered it in a few minutes with Nal behind and switched on the lights. “We are no safer from probability waves down here than we are anywhere else,” he said, “but at least we may have a chance to hit back. We can’t approach that converter-globe again without risking destruction or transplantation to heaven knows where. So the obvious answer is to destroy it from a distance by vibratory waves.”

  Turning, he went over to one of the instruments with which the laboratory was filled. He paused at length before an apparatus that reminded Nal of a telescopic reflector.

  “When we came from our home planet,” the savant said, operating switches that made the instrument turn on a massive central pillar, “we brought three of these vibratory guns with us in case there should be dangerous life on this world.

  “We never needed to use them and this one has remained in case of attack from space. It directs a molecular vibration upon any given object at any distance, passing through intervening matter in the form of an X-ray. Now, let us see what the predictor tells us.”

  He studied a balanced needle swinging in a vacuum globe and operated more controls. Nal watched the needle turn gently until it pointed exactly parallel with the direction of the gun barrel.

  “The needle is now pointing to the converter-globe two miles away,” Grifa explained. “Any great center of electricity attracts the needle—or if need be any particular mass of matter.” He paused. “We are dead-sighted on that abominable creation of yours. Let’s see what we can do with it.”

  Switches moved. Power hummed. Nothing of a visible nature left the gigantic projector, but after a second or two the needle in the vacuum-globe suddenly jumped into a vertical position and became steady. Grifa gave a deep sigh and stood back.

  “It’s destroyed,” he said thankfully. “The electrical mass is no longer there. The needle proves it. We had better look for ourselves.”

  They hurried out of the laboratory together and to the main rooms on the ground floor. From the window they gazed out beyond the milling people and caverns of darkness to the spot where a glowing point of light had been. It had vanished. There was void.

  “And—and that should cure the trouble?” Nal asked.

  “Perhaps.” The First Physicist turned from the window as an eddying gust of wind hurled expected rain against it. Outside, lightning blazed transiently. “Perhaps,” he repeated moodily. “At least it means that the effect cannot go on being created. What remains can only be from the initial trouble and ultimately the balance should settle down. We destroyed it in the only way we could. Cutting off the power would not have done it. It was alive within itself.”

  “And—Mydia Fro?” Nal asked somberly, then he turned and looked sharply at the desk where Grifa usually worked. In a sudden blur the desk vanished and left empty floor.

  “So,” Grifa muttered, “the effect still goes on. So I suppose it will do until every displaced probability wave has found its proper position and a new order of things is established. It may take years—centuries—aeons.”

  A clap of thunder drowned the remainder of his words. Nal looked about him dully, still almost bereft of the power to think. In fact only two realizations had any deep signif
icance for him. One was that Mydia had gone, he knew not where. The other, that he had brought about the destruction of the city he loved.

  Then with devastating abruptness the storm that had been gathering since the breakdown of the Climatic machines burst in a deluge of rain against the window. It rattled violently, and rattled again to the booming roar of a hurricane wind. Nal turned a grim face and stared outside. Across the broad avenue three giant buildings dissolved even as lightning illumined them. For a split second there was a vision of swirling humanity fleeing for shelter—

  The ground trembled as deep down under the earth probabilities gave way to new probabilities and matter in places ceased to be, or was transferred elsewhere.

  The lights in the glazed ceiling died and a moment later the visiphone buzzed for attention. Grifa strode across to it on the wall, his way lighted by a chaotic blaze of forked lightning. As he pressed the switch no face appeared on the glass screen but a troubled voice chattered to him.

  “Excellence, I have been trying to make contact with the king. Probably he has been killed. There are none left who can take control. This is the First Adviser speaking. What am I to do? What has happened?

  “I—I have seen things appear and disappear without reason. The latest reports from our exploration fliers state that even our traditional Sphinx and Pyramids have been transported two thousand miles to the middle of an empty desert! How could that come about?”

  “The explanation is scientific, my friend—a gigantic scientific flaw,” Grifa responded. “There is nothing you, or I, or anybody can do about it. Watch out for your own safety, until the disturbance subsides. The whole basic structure of matter is undermined.”

  The communication was cut off suddenly. An entire wall of the building dissolved and Grifa and Nal found themselves battered by cyclonic winds and saturating rain before they even had a chance to move. The First Physicist went sprawling. Nal seized him and dragged him to his feet again.

  “We’ll have to find shelter!” he shouted into the savant’s ear.

  Drenched, Grifa gazed at the chain lightning whiplashing the raging heavens. He shook his head.

  “There’ll be no shelter for us, son—not for days or weeks, maybe not for years. Everything in this area is toppling into a new balance. The effect will go on throughout the planet, progressively, maybe even into space itself for generations yet to come.”

  “But we might survive,” Nal said desperately. “Some of us have got to, if only to perpetuate the science of our race.”

  “Some of us will,” the savant agreed. “But as I see it, after the horror that has been released they will almost certainly be witless savages, groping for shelter in a shattered, bewildering world. Science and education always vanish before elemental fury, Nal.”

  The earth gulped and heaved. Both men staggered heavily amidst the swamping rain. Far away to the east, momentarily lighted by the lightning, was a clear silver line carrying with it a roar that penetrated even the storm.

  “That’s—that’s the ocean!” Nal gasped, fascinated. “It must mean that our whole city is sinking—perhaps even the continent itself. It’s a tidal wave! It’ll crash down on us! Do you understand, sir?” he shouted. “Then you say some of us will survive!”

  “Some will, as the waters subside.” The First Physicist stared at the advancing line for a moment. “What you have done, Nal, will be long remembered,” he said at length. “Those who come after us—generations as yet unborn—will wonder whence came a Sphinx and Pyramids in the middle of a desert. Whither went a race of scientists who must have existed in this part of the world.

  “Unexplained things in unexplained places—eternal riddles. Mighty objects that could never have been moved by mortal agency. All the work of shifting probabilities which began this night.”

  Grifa seemed suddenly possessed of visionary power in the face of imminent death.

  “Perhaps the perfect balance will never be found. New probabilities will appear like bubbles in the space-time continuum, but with gradually diminishing frequency. Human beings and animals will vanish from the midst of their fellows without trace. Ocean ships which must come again in course of time will sail and never be heard of again. Airplanes will hurtle through the sky and into unexplained extinction.

  “Out in space stars will come and go for no known reason. Shiftings—probabilities, until the perfect balance is attained when thermodynamic equilibrium is reached in the unthinkably distant future.”

  Suddenly Grifa was gone, transposed by a probability shift to a lonely planet circling Antares. For a second or two he gazed upon the lonely, deathly world on which he stood and then he died, rent asunder by the explosion of air within him.

  Nal Folan, stíll on Earth, gazed stupidly a| the spot where the First Physicist had been. Then he glanced up at the roaring waters sweeping down upon what remained of tottering Atlantis.

  He started to run. He had no idea where, over rocks and fallen metal, with the mighty tide surging irresistibly behind him.

  Then it had vanished. Nal was reeling through long rank grass under a calm moon and stars. Nowhere was there a sign Atlantis, of havoc, of tidal wave. Probability had decided that he should be an unknown distance from the spot where Deluge had struck.

  Survivors? The thought twisted through his mind. Perhaps others would come to begin anew the task of building a race, which in turn would wonder upon the marvels, the mysteries, the unexplained riddles in the world about them.

  Forever more there must be a planet in which there was no certainty, from which there would one day spring a Principle of Indeterminacy, a world wherein one might step from the everyday into a new probability and be gone from fellowmen forever; where one might fly the heavens and never be heard of again. Where one might sail the oceans and never reach port. Where one might find the tombs of Egyptian kings in Pyramids that once held the ashes of the dignitaries of Atlantis.

  Nal smiled wearily. These were things for the future. For the moment he had survived. Perhaps he would continue to survive, to hand down records which in course of time would become legends of a master-race of Atlantis which had perished in the Deluge…He had to find others of his own kind somewhere in this calm, unknown land where the moonlight shone silver on softly waving grass.

  AND HAPPINESS EVERLASTING, by Gerald Warfield

  The ancient man at the head of the table leaned forward. “I’m sorry to tell you,” he said, his jowls quivering, “that your brother, Charles, is dead.”

  Eddie blinked. A chill settled in his gut.

  “He committed suicide,” the man continued, gripping the edge of the table with his gnarled hands. “Lethal injection.”

  In his mind Eddie saw a smiling Charlie, not the real Charlie, but a holograph that sat in his living room taken on the day his brother began work at Celestial Games.

  No one at the massive table met his gaze except Jeremiah Adolphus, a sagging pyramid of flesh whose blotched, domed head was uninterrupted by hair, not even eyebrows.

  “There was no note, but I’m sure you know about Charles’s depressions.” He gave Eddie a knowing look.

  Eddie hesitated before nodding.

  Why had they brought him here to tell him—and why in front of the board? He had almost refused the limo that had come for him this morning, but he feared Charlie was in trouble. Maybe he locked himself in a lab or something; he wasn’t the most stable person. But that was the worst he expected: that they needed someone to negotiate with Charlie.

  “And,” continued Adolphus, pointedly, “I’m afraid there’s more. It appears Charles did something quite remarkable before he….” The man’s eyelids fluttered, his knuckles turned white as he gripped the table. “Although first,” he said, after a deep breath, “I should ask if you have any idea what your brother did here at Celestial Games?”

  Eddie spoke at last. “My assumption was that he designed computer games.” The board members looked at him with a mixture of pity and condescension.<
br />
  Adolphus leaned back. His shoulders sagged, and he put his fingertips together. “He was developing an interface that would allow gamers to interact with the game using only their minds.”

  “Okay.” It didn’t sound possible, but Eddie never understood Charlie’s work. “My sister and I always said that he was the genius of the family.”

  “He was brilliant,” agreed Mr. Adolphus, and there were assenting nods around the table.

  A man slid into the vacant chair on Eddie’s right. Glancing at him, Eddie saw that his long salt-and-pepper hair was unkempt, his skin sallow, and his eyes protruded from his head. Hunched over in his chair, the man twitched as his gaze shifted around the table. Eddie had once seen a rat in an aquarium with a snake. The rat was bug-eyed and twitched.

  “He was not successful,” continued Adolphus. “And there would be no reason even to mention it now except that, in the process, he did something else quite unexpected. He migrated his—how shall I say it—his persona into our primary development server.”

  “His what?”

  “He managed to transfer his conscious mind from his body to the computer before killing himself.”

  “You mean he’s still alive—conscious in there?”

  “Quite so,” Adolphus leaned back, withdrawing into the folds of his own flesh. “He spent months constructing a virtual world that we knew nothing about, and then, last Friday at six o-clock he sent his assistant home, ate half a pound of chocolate, inserted the needle in his arm, set the timer, and transferred his consciousness over to the computer. He didn’t even know when the timer went off.”

  The chill in Eddie’s gut crept up his spine and the back of his neck. He couldn’t let himself dwell on Charlie’s last moments, not now.

  “Unfortunately, he left no instructions how to get in and out of this world. With effort, we’ve been able to access it, but we don’t know how to get out again. It requires some kind of exit key.”