few things I can do. I was interested in space. That’s how I happened to
discover the space-time warp principle. I thought about space out there in
the shell. I figured out ways to control it. It was something to do to
while away the time.”
Kingsley glanced around the room, like a busy man ready to depart, looking
to see if he had forgotten anything.
“Well,” he rumbled, “what are we waiting for? Let us get to work.”
“Now, wait a second,” interrupted Gary. “Do we want to do this? Are we sure
we aren’t rushing into something we’ll be sorry for? After all, all we have
to go on are the Voices. We’re taking them on face value alone… and
Voices don’t have faces.”
“Sure,” piped up Herb, “how do we know they aren’t kidding us? How do we
know this isn’t some sort of a cosmic joke? Maybe there’s a fellow out
there somewhere laughing fit to kill at how he’s got us all stirred up.”
Kingsley’s face flushed with anger, but Caroline laughed.
“You look so serious, Gary,” she declared.
“It’s something to be serious about,” Gary protested. “We are monkeying
around with something that’s entirely out of our line. Like a bunch of kids
playing with an atom bomb. We might set loose something we wouldn’t be able
to stop. Something might be using us to help it set up an easy way to get
at the solar system. We might be just pulling someone’s chestnuts out of
the fire.”
“Gary,” said Caroline softly, “if you had heard that Voice you wouldn’t
doubt. I know it’s on the level. You see, it isn’t a voice, really… it’s
a thought. I know there’s danger and that we must help, do everything we
can. There are other volunteers, you know, other people, or other things,
from other parts of the universe.”
“How do you know?” asked Gary fiercely.
“I don’t know how,” she defended herself. “I just know. That’s all.
Intuition, perhaps, or maybe a background thought in the Engineer’s mind
that rode through with the message.”
Gary looked around at the others. Evans was amused. Kingsley was angry. He
looked at Herb.
“What the hell,” said Herb. “Let’s take a chance.”
Just like that, thought Gary. A woman’s intuition, the burning zeal of a
scientist, the devil-may-care, adventuresome spirit of mankind. No reason,
no logic… mere emotion. A throwback to the old days of chivalry.
Once a mad monk had stood before the crowds and shook a sword in air and
shrieked invective against another faith, and, because of this, Christian
armies, year after year, broke their strength against the walls of eastern
cities.
Those were the Crusades.
This, too, was a crusade. A Cosmic Crusade. Man again answering the clarion
call to arms. Man again taking up the sword on faith alone. Man pitting his
puny strength, his little brain against great cosmic forces. Man… the
damn fool… sticking out his neck.
Chapter Six
A GHOSTLY machine was taking shape upon the hard, pitted, frozen surface of
the field… a crazy machine that glimmered weirdly in the half-light of
the stars. A machine with mind-wrenching angles, with flashing prisms and
spidery framework, a towering skeleton of a machine that stretched out
spaceward.
Made of material in which the atomic motion had been stilled, it stood
defiant against the most powerful forces of man or void. Anchored
magnetically to the core of the planet, it stood firmly planted, a spidery,
frail-appearing thing, but with a strength that would stand against the
unimaginable drag of a cosmic space-time warp.
From it long cables snaked their way over the frozen surface to the
laboratory power plant. Through those slender cables, their resistance
lowered by the bitter cold, tremendous power loads could be poured into the
strange machine.
“They’re space-nuts,” grumbled Ted Smith at Gary’s elbow. “They’re fixing
to blow Pluto all to hell. I wish there was some way for me to get away
from here before the fireworks start.”
Herbs’ voice crackled in Gary’s helmet-phones, answering the complaint.
“Shucks, there just won’t nothing happen. That contraption looks more like
something a kid would build with a tinker toy set than a machine. I can’t
see, for the life of me, how it’ll ever work.”
“I gave up long ago,” said Gary. “Caroline tried to explain it to me, but I
guess I’m just sort of dense. I can’t make head or tall of it. All I know
is that it’s supposed to be an anchor post, a thing that will help the
Engineers set up this space warp of theirs and after it is set up will
operate to hold it in position.”
“I never did set any stock in that Engineer talk,” Ted told him, “but
there’s been something I’ve been wanting to tell you two. Haven’t been able
to catch you, you’ve been so busy. But I wanted to tell you about it, for
you’re the only two who haven’t gone entirely star-batty.”
“V/hat is it?” Gary asked.
“Well, you know,” said Ted, “I don’t attach much meaning to it, but it does
seem kind of funny. A few days ago I sneaked out for a walk. Against
orders, you know. Not supposed to get out of sight of the settlement. Too
many things can happen here.
“But, anyhow, I went for a walk. Out along the mountains and over the
carbon dioxide glacier and down into the little valley that lies just over
the shoulder of the glacier.”
He paused dramatically.
“You found something there?” asked Gary.
“Sure did,” declared Ted proudly. “I found some ruins. Chiseled white
stone. Scattered all over the valley floor. As if there had been a building
there at one time and somebody had pulled it down stone by stone and threw
the stones around.”
“Sure it wasn’t just boulders or peculiar rock formations?” asked Gary.
“No, sir,” said Ted, emphatically. “There were chisel marks on those
stones. Workmen had dressed them at some time. And all of it was white
stone. You show me any white stone around here.”
Gary understood what the radio operator meant. The mountains were black,
black as the emptiness of space. He turned his head to stare at those
jagged peaks that loomed over the settlement, their spearlike points
faintly outlined against the black curtain of the void.
“Say,” said Herb, “that sounds as if what the Engineers said about someone
else living here at one time might be true.”
“If Ted found building stone, that’s exactly what it means,” Gary asserted.
“That would denote a city of some kind, intelligence of some kind, It takes
a certain degree of culture to work stone.”
“But,” argued Herb, “how could anyone have lived here? You know that Pluto
cooled quick, lost its lighter gases in a hurry. Its oxygen and carbon
dioxide are locked up in snow and ice. Too cold for any life.”
“I know all that,” Gary agreed, “but it seems we can’t be too sure of
anything in this business. If Ted is right, it means the Engineers were
right on at least one point where we all were wrong. It sort of gives a man
more faith in what is going on.”
“Well,” said Ted, “I just wanted to tell you. I was going to go out there
again some day and look around, but since then I’ve been too busy. Ever
since you sent that story out, space has been full of messages…
governmental stuff, messages from scientists and cranks. Don’t give a man
no time to himself at all.”
As the radio man walked back to his shack, Gary looked toward the
laboratory. Two space-suited figures were coming out of the main lock.
“That’s Caroline and Kingsley,” said Herb. “They’ve been up there to talk
to the Engineers again. Got stuck on something. Wanted the Engineers to
explain it to them.”
“Looks to me like it’s about finished,” said Gary. “Caroline told me she
didn’t know just how much longer it would take, but she had hopes of
getting it into working order in another day or two. Tommy’s gone without
sleep the last twenty hours, working to get his ship in tip-top shape.
They’ve gone over the thing from control panel to rocket tubes.”
“What I’d like to know,” said Herb, irritably, “is just how we’re going to
use the ship in getting out to where the Engineers are.”
“Those are instructions,” said Gary. “Instructions from the Engineers. We
don’t dare do anything around here unless they say it’s all right.”
The space-suited figures were coming rapidly down the path to the
space-field. Gary hailed them as they came nearer. “Find out what was
wrong?” he asked.
Kingsley’s voiced boomed at him. “Several things wrong,” he declared. “This
ought to put it in working shape.”
The four of them advanced on the machine. Gary fell into step with Caroline
and looked at the girl’s face through her helmet visor. “You look fagged