Collected Short Fiction, page 214
“Half the men were killed, you know, when they were first working on the atom. Jarvis was sick for years with the terrible sores the radiation caused—and twice explosions almost killed him.”
Her dark eyes closed for a moment. Upon the oval of her smooth face, framed in her smooth dark hair, descended a curious serenity.
“Somehow, Cyril,” she went on, “this is—different. I wanted to come with Jarvis—even if we died. Somehow I knew that you and I couldn’t be happy, behind.”
VII.
UNDER THE SMALL, laminated quartz dome of the conning pit, atop the vast uranium dome of the converter tower, stood Rodney Trent, alert with expectation. The only light within came from the faintly glowing instruments and the red end of Thorn’s cigar. Without, still lay the oppression of darkness.
On the uranium plain the blinding green tongue of the converter beam still licked a patch of dazzling incandescence. Beyond that, above, in every direction, closed in the black mists of infinity, mysteriously dreadful.
Time, to Rod, became an intolerable burden. He was conscious of the drum and rush of his blood. Then that gave way to the waxing tick of his watch. And that, in turn, waned before the keen, thin hissing of the green ray, and the very faint humming that came from all the mass of metal below him.
“Sure?” Suspense drove him to the query. “Sure we’re moving anywhere?” The red tip of the cigar moved up and down with his nod of affirmation.
“Yes,” Thom said. “We’re coming up through size, and flying out away from the Earth, at the same time, into the freedom of space. We’re moving slowly, yet the fields are still building, and I’m testing the instruments. The Infiniterra was untried, you know. But we shall be outside the Galaxy before you sleep, Mr. Trent.”
Rod pondered for a time upon that calm prediction, groping for the stupendous reality that he sensed behind it. He wished that he had read more of astronomy, of science generally. If he had known that this was coming——
Then he became absorbed again in his effort to penetrate that ultimate, smothering darkness.
“The Sun!” he cried at last. “I see the Sun.”
A mottled scarlet sphere, it slid out of black obscurity. Its red light, waxing, flooded the heavens once more with ghastly radiance. Overhead, however, the red immediately began to fade. Crimson constellations burst out there, though the horizon remained fogged with blood-red haze.
“Stars!” Rod whispered. “Red stars, coming out in daylight.”
“We’re rising into the stratosphere,” Thom told him. “The air above us has thinned so that stars are visible, in spite of the Sunlight. And we are yet so small that the ultra-violet registers as red. If we had expanded the Infiniterra too much, in the Earth’s atmosphere, we might have left destruction behind us.”
Rod looked down, into the periscope screens. But the little ovals, he found, were veiled with the same red haze that obscured the horizon. Laboratory, bright summer countryside, city, were already lost.
Steadily, above, the star fields widened. The ominous redness evaporated, leaving a void of unimagined blackness, in which the stars burned with a white or many colored splendor that Rod had never seen. The Sun was a blinding face of wonder, looking between the parted flame-curtains of the corona.
Where the Sun struck it, the Infiniterra’s shell flamed with a startling white radiance. Elsewhere it was a ghostly sphere of starlight.
“I’ll turn the ship a little,” Thorn said, “so that the Earth will be visible through the dome.”
The winged Sun declined in the black sky. Opposite, above the straight metal horizon, a clouded, greenish sphere rose lazily. Rod was astonished that the Earth could already be so small, so far distant. Yet this, he knew, was indeed the Earth. He could trace out the familiar outlines of both Americas, tiny and brownish, under the shimmering white crown of the polar region.
In the dark gulf below, a little disk of hard white light swung into view. It was stained and scarred. It was like a small, flawed diamond on black velvet. The Moon—already shrunken to half its proper size.
Moon and Earth dwindled visibly. They drew together in the darkness, and away from him. He was appalled by a sudden realization of the hurtling swiftness of the flight.
“Already,” he gasped, “we’ve come thousands of miles.”
“Hundreds of thousands,” amended Thorn. “And that is not a fraction of the distance we must go.”
Rod hardly heard, for he was watching the Earth. His pulse was hammering in panic of bewilderment. At first he doubted his eyes, but there it was again.
The brown, tiny figure of the two Americas, sharply etched, slipped quickly across the soft, blue-green sphere. The long prow of Asia burst into view, beneath the rotating polar crown. Australia hung below it, a little gray blot. They fled away, before Europe and the dark triangle of Africa.
And then, swiftly, the twisted hourglass of the Americas returned.
Still watching, Rod drew a long breath.
It happened again. The dwindling sphere spun faster. The white shred of the Moon crept up beside it, thinning to a diminutive crescent.
“The Earth!” he called to Thorn, vaguely alarmed. “It’s turning while I watch it. And each turn—a day?”
“It is, Trent. It is.” The deep voice held a trace of consternation. “An effect of what I called, back there, a compression in time. I hadn’t realized that it would be so great.”
“We’re very large, already?”
“The Infiniterra is roughly the size of the Earth, now, Trent. You, by your old standard of comparison, would be about one mile tall.”
Rod flexed his arm; it felt the same as ever. He looked down at the dull gleam of his shoe. He couldn’t imagine that distance a mile. But of course he couldn’t tell. Size, Thorn had said, was relative.
THEN, in the harsh, glancing light of the naked Sun, he saw that Thorn was still staring at the Earth. Dismay lined his face; it was heavy with regret.
“Why, doctor!” cried Rod, anxiously. Thorn’s assured competence had been his armor against the terror of these breath-taking marvels. If Thorn was disturbed—— Horror touched him, with the thought. “Doctor, what is it?”
“Look at the Earth,” whispered Thorn.
The greenish planet was now a tiny thing, and blurred with the swiftness of its spinning, so that the only distinguishable feature was the white fleck of the polar crown. The Moon was as small as the morning star. It swept around the greenish ball, once, twice, again.
Faster it moved, ever faster, hurtling.
The Earth shrank to a green star. It swung away, beyond the blue-white face of the Sun, and came back again.
“I hadn’t realized,” moaned Thorn. “For myself, I was prepared. And my men were warned—but many had families——”
“I don’t see——” said Rod. “What’s the matter?”
He still watched the green star. As fast as the tiny Moon, now lost, had circled it, it was swinging around the Sun. And faster, faster.
He was aware of other bright motes, also flinging aimlessly about the white ball of the Sun. The planets, he thought. The tiny, darting one would be Mercury; the swift, silver-blue one, Venus. The deliberate ones, outside the green Earth, would be red Mars, white Jupiter, tawny Saturn.
Faster they wheeled, ever faster, like maddened insects drawn to a flame. And even the flame, the Sun, was shrinking, slipping away.
“I don’t mind for myself,” the scientist was muttering blankly. “Many of us will have no personal regrets. But many had hoped to return, or had some one waiting.”
“Oh,” breathed Rod, staggered under the slow realization. “We can’t go back?”
“Not to our world,” Thorn informed him, bleakly. “It’s gone. We’ve watched a thousand years slip away, Trent. Our world is—dead.”
Rod battled with that finality.
“We can’t—not at all?”
“We could find the Earth again—and find that the ages had wiped out everything we knew. Even the human race, perhaps—dead.”
“But,” persisted Rod, “when we grow small, you said, we are compressed in time. Wouldn’t we go back through it?”
“No, Trent. Time is irreversible. Even if we turned now, ten thousand years would have gone before we could reach the Earth. It is merely that time passes more slowly, comparatively, when, we are smaller in size. Some one has speculated that electronic worlds might be born, age, and die, in the flash of exploding gunpowder.
“No, time flows in the same direction, always. Our world is behind us, forever. And we are dropping centuries farther behind, with every beat of our hearts.”
Rod was silent, struggling to understand the meaning of that. He wouldn’t be going to the office any more. He’d never turn his copy in to old McGreggor again, never have another battle over his expense account. He’d never speak to one of his friends again, or stroll into the corner joint for a beer. He wouldn’t see his old room any more.
That made him remember that his rent was due to-day—no, it was ten thousand years ago. It was Mr. Connors’ birthday, and Mrs. Connors had been waiting for the money, to buy the old fellow a microscope he had set his heart on. Rod was sorry he hadn’t paid the rent, before he left the house since.
New realization, then, came over him like a crushing wave, drenching him with loneliness of desolation. His head sank against his palm; he felt an unexpected wetness on his cheek.
The past was gone.
What lay ahead? Thorn didn’t know. Nobody did. Well, he’d see it through. Don’t take life too seriously.
Anyhow, he’d see new things before he died. He threw up his head.
Beyond the dome, his dulled attention was immediately claimed by new changes in the firmament. He could no longer find the Sun. The constellations were warped and twisted. They were, he saw’, still changing. Distorted star patterns flowed, crept eerily across the infinite black mask of space.
Color was changing again. The stars were violet, and fading.
He spoke to Thorn. The scientist started, jarred out of some grim preoccupation of his own.
“Violet!” he exclaimed, and then said calmly, “Yes, so they are. That is because their longest radiation registers within our eyes as violet, the shortest visible wave length. When we are a little larger, the stars will be invisible. Their longest waves will be too short for us to see.”
“We must have come a long way,” said Rod.
He was striving for some conception of their hurtling flight toward infinity. When he could feel no change, no motion, it was hard to perceive the reality of it.
“We have,” Thorn said, “to express it from an older point of view, been traveling fifty thousand years, at the limiting velocity of light.”
He pointed deliberately through the dome.
“See, the stars are already crowding together into a lenticular spiral. We shall soon be outside the Galaxy.”
Rod looked. Most of the stars, he saw, and the faint patches of nebular light, were indeed gathering into a vague, violet cloud on one side of them. Ahead was the black gulf, broken only by the inconsequential gleams of farther nebulae. The light of that dwindling star-swarm was becoming very dim. It would soon be gone.
It was hard to believe that the Earth was but a lost mote, somewhere in that dying swirl of light. The Earth, where Mrs. Connors had served him breakfast that morning, and he had inquired about the old gentleman’s asthma. Well, maybe it wasn’t. Perhaps, in fifty thousand years, it had already plunged into the Sun, or been battered into cosmic dust.
The pale glow went out.
Again the dome was in darkness. Outside, the only light was the green, hissing flame of the converter beam. He looked down into its dazzling radiance. Already, he saw, it had eaten deep into the uranium. It struck into a ragged, pitted crater of green flame.
Countless tons of metal had been consumed, to drive them out of the Galaxy.
What next?
The mass of uranium, after all, was no more than touched. There would be power yet, to go a long way. He put the question to Thorn.
“Infinity,” the big scientist told him, his deep voice vibrant, once more, with a strange fascination. “We’re driving out into infinity—in space and in time and in size.”
“But what will infinity be?”
“We’ve come to find out. It is the oldest riddle. From the beginning, man has struggled with it. Every child, every savage, asks: What’s beyond beyond? No philosopher has ever answered the question.
“But we may see the answer—if the power holds out.”
“The uranium?” said Rod. “We haven’t touched it.”
“And we’ve merely begun the flight. I think we can reach infinity—whatever it may be. Will Starbuck says we can’t. We shall see. There will be no returning. We can only go on until——”
VIII.
“HERE! Jarvis?”
“Eh?” Thorn started at the shout through the manhole. “Oh, so it’s you, Morrie? Climb up. We’re a little crowded in here—careful about the instruments.”
Old Morrison Cross clambered up into the dim little space under the dome. One yellowed hand clutched the snakeheaded cane. He was a tall man, longbodied; in spite of the paunch he looked gaunt. His ungraceful limbs were trembling now; his long face was haggard with a sickness of frightened rage.
“What’s this, Jarvis?” he yelped. “What’s happened to us?”
“We’re flying out to infinity, Morrie,” Thorn told him calmly. “Already we are outside the Galaxy.”
“Listen, Jarvis!” The high voice tried to be harsh, but it was smothered under angry fear. “Don’t think you’re pulling any wool over my eyes. I’ve been talking to Starbuck, and he gave you away. I got the truth out of him.”
He seesawed, grasping the cane with two hands.
“You’re responsible for this, Jarvis.”
“For that?”
“You know what’s happened!” Terror choked him to a whisper. “Don’t lie to me. You saw the Earth flying around the Sun like a rock on a string. You know that ages have passed.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Take me back, Jarvis.” His old voice quivered with pleading. “You did this. You’ve got to take me back.”
“I’m sorry, Morrie. You might as well beg for Helen of Troy. The past is gone.”
“You can’t do this to me!” And a terrible accusation shook his voice. “You admit we can’t go back?”
“We can’t. I warned you, Morrie. And you heard Starbuck.”
“Damn you, Jarvis!” His long, bony forefinger shook threateningly. “I had confidence in you. And who was Starbuck, but a young whippersnapper upstart? I didn’t want to miss a show that was costing me thirty millions.”
“Well,” Thorn told him genially, “you haven’t missed it yet, Morrie—it’s still going on.” He looked at a dial. “Less than half of one per cent of the uranium is gone. We’ve fuel for a long time yet.”
He stopped to look at the old man in the dark.
“What do you care, Morrie? What good were you doing anybody? Who’ll be sorry you’re gone? Some of my men, though, have families; I had hoped to get them back.”
“So we’re all to die on this damned ball of metal?” Cross asked bitterly. “When?”
“I can’t say when or where or how. We’re flying into mystery, Morrie.”
On the instrument ledge a telephone buzzed softly. Thorn answered it, and then said:
“Mr. Young is going to move the cube, now, down into the central sphere. Morrie, if you and Trent will go back aboard, you’ll be carried down to your quarters.”
He anticipated Rod’s question.
“There’s nothing to be seen now, Trent. We’re beyond the radiation of our universe. When we see again—or if we see again—it will be with the light of the universe above. I’ll send for you before that happens.”
Rod followed Morrison Cross down the long spiral of the metal stair, past the forbidding bright bulk of the converter. A low throbbing sound came from it, oddly musical. The green ray flaming from the barrel filled the dome with ghastly light, and its hissing was unending.
Cadaverously gaunt in the green light, Morrison Cross stumbled down the steps, with both hands on his stomach as if in pain.
A hand rapped softly, an hour later, against the metal floor of the conning pit. Thorn opened the sliding panel, invited, “Come up.” He took a pipe out of his mouth, and looked down out of the pale glow in the dome.
A platinum head rose through the opening, followed by a trim form in well tailored gray. A serious face looked up eagerly. Steady, blue-gray eyes smiled under even brows.
“Melanie!” he exclaimed, in sudden apprehension. “You stayed off the cube? I didn’t know. I’ve been shifting the beam; it might have caught.
He reached down and helped her to climb to the small circular floor, beside him. Her fingers clung to his, with a warm, impulsive little pressure. She swung to her feet, almost against him. Her body was slender, yet energetic with a precious vital strength. His nostrils caught the fragrance of her, and for a moment he closed his eyes.
“I had to see you, Jarvis,” she said. With a little unsteady laugh of relief, she gave him a thick envelope from her purse. “Here’s the transcript of your last dictation. My excuse to come.”
He took it silently, waiting for her to speak.
“They’re saying, Jarvis, that we can never return to the old world.” Her voice was low and anxious. “Is that true?”
He studied her grave, tense face.
“Yes, Melanie. We can’t go back. Are you afraid?”
“No.” She shook her head, smiling briefly. “You had warned me. I was ready for that. I’d be glad—but for one thing.”
“What’s that, Melanie?”
She hesitated, and then, with an abrupt little jerk of her head, asked another question:
“Did you tell Mrs. Thorn what I had found out about her affair with Culpepper?”
Thorn dwelt upon her slender loveliness, and replied deliberately:
