had been listening to the story instead of studying the almost-sheer emptiness that was
space. “And since it is a truism of Norlaminian psychology that any lapse of
consciousness, of however short duration, is impressed upon the conscious of a mind of
even moderate power, I feel safe in saying that for Dorothy and me, at least, no lapse of
time did occur or could have occurred.”
“There!” Dorothy exulted. “You’ve got to admit that Martin knows his stuff. How are you
going to get around that?”
“Search me–wish I knew.” Seaton frowned in thought. “But Mart chirped it, I think, when
he said `for Dorothy and me, at least,’ because for us two time certainly lapsed, and
lapsed plenty. However, Mart certainly does know his stuff; the old think tank is full of
bubbles all the time. He doesn’t make positive statements very often, and when he does
you can sink the bank roll on ’em. Therefore, since you were both conscious and time did
not lapse-for you -it must have been time itself that was cuckoo instead of you. It must
have stretched, or must have been stretched, like the very dickens-for you.
“Where does that idea get us? I might think that their time was intrinsically variable, as
well as being different from ours, if it was not for the regular alternation of night and day-
of light and darkness, at least-that Peg and I saw, and which affected the whole country,
as far as we could see. So that’s out.
“Maybe they treated you two to a dose of suspended animation or something of the kind,
since you weren’t going anywhere . . . Nope, that idea doesn’t carry the right earmarks,
and besides it would have registered as such on Martin’s Norlaminianly psychological
brain. So that’s out, too. In fact, the only thing that could deliver the goods would be a
sta-but that’d be a trifle strong, even for a hyperman, I’m afraid.”
“What would?” demanded Margaret. “Anything that you would call strong ought to be
worth listening to.”
“A stasis of time. Sounds a trifle far-fetched, of course, but . . .”
“But phooey!” Dorothy exclaimed. “Now you are raving, Dick!”
“I’m not so sure of that, at all,” Seaton argued stubbornly. “They really understand time, I
think, and I picked up a couple of pointers. It would take a sixth-order field . . . That’s it,
I’m pretty sure, and that gives me an idea. If they can do it in hypertime, why can’t we do
it in ours?”
“I fail to see how such a stasis could be established,” argued Crane. “It seems to me
that as long as matter exists time must continue, since it is quite firmly established that
time depends upon matter-or rather upon the motion in space of that which we call
matter.”
“Sure-that’s what I’m going on. Time and motion are both relative. Stop all motion-
relative, not absolute motion -and what have you? You have duration without sequence or
succession, which is what?”
“That would be a stasis of time, as you say,” Crane conceded, after due deliberation.
“How can you do it?”
“I don’t know yet whether I can or not-that’s another question. We already know, though,
how to set up a stasis of the ether along a spherical surface, and after I have
accumulated a little more data on the sixth order it should not be impossible to calculate
a volume-stasis in both ether and sub-ether, far enough down to establish complete
immobility and local cessation of time in gross matter so affected.”
“But would not all matter so affected assume at once the absolute zero of temperature
and thus preclude life?”
“I don’t think so. The stasis would be sub-atomic and instantaneous, you know; there
could be no loss or transfer of energy. I don’t see how gross matter could be affected at
all. As far as I can see it would be an absolutely perfect suspension of animation. You
and Dot lived through it, anyway, and I’m positive that that’s what they did to you. And I
still say that if anybody can do it, we can.”
” `And that,’ ” put in Margaret roguishly, “as you so feelingly remark, ‘is a cheerful thought
to dwell on-let’s dwell on it!’ ”
“We’ll do that little thing, too, *Peg, some of these times; see if we don’t!” Seaton
promised. “But to get back to our knitting, what’s the good word, Mart-located us yet?
Are we, or are we not, heading for that justly famed `distant galaxy’ of the Fenachrone?”
“We are not,” Crane replied flatly, “nor are we heading for any other point in space
covered by the charts of Ravindau’s astronomers.”
“Huh? Great Cat!” Seaton joined the physicist at his visiplate, and made complete
observations upon the brightest nebulae visible.
He turned then to the charts, and his findings confirmed those of Crane. They were so far
away from our own galaxy that the space in which they were was unknown, even to
those masters of astronomy and of intergalactic navigation, the Fenachrone.
“Well, we’re not lost, anyway, thanks to your cautious old bean.” Seaton grinned as he
stepped over to an object compass mounted upon the plane table.
This particular instrument was equipped with every refinement known to the science of
four great solar systems. Its exceedingly delicate needle, swinging in an almost-perfect
vacuum upon practically frictionless jeweled bearings, was focused upon the
unimaginable mass of the entire First Galaxy, a mass so inconceivably great that
mathematics had shown-and even Crane would have stated as a fact-that it would affect
that needle from any point whatever, however distant in macrocosmic space.
Seaton actuated the minute force which set the needle in motion, but it did not oscillate.
For minute after minute it revolved slowly but freely, coming ultimately to rest without any
indication of having been affected in the least by any external influence. He stared at the
compass in stark, unbelieving amazement, then tested its current and its every other
factor. The instrument was in perfect order and in perfect adjustment. Grimly, quietly, he
repeated the oscillatory test-with the same utterly negative result.
“Well, that is eminently, conclusively, definitely, and unqualifiedly that.” He stared at
Crane, unseeing, his mind racing. “The most sensitive needle we’ve got, and she won’t
even register!”
“In other words, we are lost.” Crane’s voice was level and calm. “We are so far away
from the First Galaxy that even that compass, supposedly reactive from any possible
location in space, is useless.”
“But I don’t get it, at all, Mart!” Seaton exclaimed, paying no attention to the grim
meaning underlying his friend’s utterance. “With the whole mass of the galaxy as its
object of attachment that needle absolutely will register from a distance greater than any
possible diameter of the superuniverse . . .” His voice died away.
“Go on; you are beginning to see the light,” Crane prompted.
“Yeah-no wonder I couldn’t plot a curve to trace those Fenachrone torpedoes-our
fundamental assumptions were unsound, The fact simply is that if space is curved at all,
the radius of curvature is vastly greater than any figure as yet proposed, even by the
Fenachrone astronomers. We certainly weren’t out of our own space a thousandth of a
second -more likely only a couple of millionths-do you suppose that there really are folds
in the fourth dimension?”
“That idea has been advanced, but folds are not strictly necessary, nor are they easy to
defend. It has always seemed to me that the hypothesis of linear departure is much
more tenable. The planes need not be parallel, you know-in fact, it is almost a
mathematical certainty that they are not parallel.”
“That’s so, too; and that hypothesis would account for everything, of course. But how are
. . .”
“What are you two talking about?” demanded Dorothy. “We simply couldn’t have come
that far-why, the Skylark was stuck in the ground the whole time!”
“As a physicist, Red-Top, you’re a fine little beauty-contest winner.” Seaton grinned.
“You forget that with the velocity she had, the Lark wouldn’t have been stopped within
three months, either-yet she seemed to stop. How about that, Mart?”
“I have been thinking about that. It is all a question of relative velocities, of course; but
even at that, the angle of departure of the two spaces must have been extreme indeed to
account for our present location in three-dimensional space.”
“Extreme is right; but there’s no use yapping about it now, any more than about any other
spilled milk. We’ll just have to go places and do things; that’s all.”
“Go where and do what?” asked Dorothy pointedly.
“Lost-lost in space!” Margaret breathed.
As the dread import of their predicament struck into her consciousness she had seized
the arm rests of her chair in a spasmodic clutch; but she forced herself to relax and her
deep brown eyes held no sign of panic.
“But we have been lost in space before, Dottie, apparently as badly as we are now.