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
Here, 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, and 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. 1 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,