forced to halt our work. Afraid of an interruption. Afraid someone will
interfere.”
“But who would interfere?” asked Caroline. “Who could possibly interfere in
a thing like this? The danger is a common one. All things within the
universe should unite to try to fight it.”
“What you say is right,” declared the Engineer. “So right that it seems
impossible any could think otherwise. But there are some who do. A race so
blinded by ambition and by hatred that they see in this approaching
Catastrophe an opportunity to wipe us out, to destroy the Engineers.”
The Earthlings stood stock-still, shocked.
“Now, wait a second,” said Gary slowly. “Let us understand this. You mean
to say that you have enemies who would die themselves just for the
satisfaction of knowing that you were destroyed, too?”
“Not exactly,” said the Engineer. “Many of them would be destroyed, but a
select few would survive. They would go back to the point where the
universe must start again, back to the point where space and time would
once more begin expanding. And, starting there, they would take over the
new universe. They would shape it to fit their needs. They would control
it. They would have complete dominion over it.”
“But,” cried Gary, “that is mad! Utterly mad. Sacrificing a present people,
throwing away an entire universe for a future possibility.”
“Not so mad,” said Kingsley quietly. “Our own Earth history will furnish
many parallels. Mad rulers, power-mad dictators ready to throw away
everything for the bare feel of power… ready to gamble with the horrors
of increasingly scientific and ruthless warfare. It almost happened on
Earth once… back in 2896. The Earth was almost wiped out when one man
yearned for power and used biological warfare in its most hideous form. He
knew what the result would be, but that didn’t stop him… Better, he
reasoned, if there were no more than a thousand persons left alive, if he
were the leader of that thousand. Nothing stopped him. The people
themselves later stopped him, after he had done the damage… stopped him
like the mad dog that he was.”
“They hate us,” said the Engineer. “They have hated us for almost a million
years. Because we, and we alone, have stood between them and their dreams
of universal conquest. They see us as the one barrier they must remove, the
one obstacle in their way. They know they never can defeat us by the power
of arms alone, cannot defeat us so utterly that we still cannot smash their
plans to take over the universe.”
“And so,” said Gary, “they are perfectly willing to let the collision of
universes wipe you out, even if it does mean disaster and destruction for
the most of them.”
“They must be nuts,” said Herb.
“You do not understand,” protested the Engineer. “For many millions of
years they have been educated with the dream of universal conquest. They
have been so thoroughly propagandized with the philosophy that the state,
the civilization, the race, is everything… that the individual does not
count at all… that there is not a single one of them who would not die to
achieve that dream. They glory in dying, glory in any sort of sacrifice
that advances them even the slightest step toward their eventual goal.”
“You said that some of them would survive even if the universe, as we know
it, were destroyed,” said Caroline. “How would they do that?”
“They have found a way to burst out of the universe,” said the Engineer.
“How to navigate the inter-space that exists outside the universe. They are
more advanced in many sciences that we. If they wished, I have no doubt
they could by themselves, with no aid at all, save us from the fate that is
approaching.”
“Perhaps,” rumbled Kingsley, “a treaty could be arranged. A sort of
eleventh-hour armistice.”
The impersonal thought of the Engineer struck at them. “There can be no
peace with them. No treaty. No armistice. For more than a million years
they have thought and practiced war. Their every thought has been directed
toward conquest. To them the very word ‘peace’ is meaningless. War is their
natural state, peace an unnatural state. And they would not, in any event,
in the remote chance that they might consider an armistice, consider it at
this time when they have a chance to prevent us from saving the universe.”
“You mean,” asked Gary, horror in his voice, “that they actually want the
universe destroyed? That they would fight you to prevent you from saving
it?”
“That,” said the Engineer, “is exactly what I mean. You understand so
well.”
“Do you expect them to attack soon?” asked Tommy.
“We do not know. They may attack at any time. We are ready at all times. We
know they will attack eventually.”
“We must find a way,” said Caroline. “We can’t let them stop us! We must
find a way!”
“We will find a way,” rumbled Kingsley. “There has to be a way, and we’ll
find it.”
“What do you call these rip-snorters you’ve been fighting all these years?”
asked Herb.
“We call them the Hellhounds,” said the Engineer, but that was not exactly
what he meant. The thought brought together a certain measure of loathing
mixed with fear and hatred. Hellhounds was the nearest the Earthlings could
translate the thought.
“They can break through the time-space curve,” said Caroline, musingly,
“and they can travel in the fifth-dimensional inter-space.” She flashed a
look at Gary, a look filled with the flare of inspiration. ‘Perhaps,” she
said, “that is the answer. Perhaps that is what we should try to find the
answer to.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Gary, “but maybe you are right.”
“The space-time curve would be rigid,” said Kingsley. “Rigid and hard to
unravel. Lines of stress and force that would be entirely new. That would
take mathematical knowledge. That and tremendous power.”
“The power of new energy,” said Gary. “Perhaps the power of the energy the
rubbing universes will create.”
Kingsley stared at him as if he had struck him with an open hand. “You have
it,” he shouted. “You have it!”
“But we haven’t got the energy,” said Gary, bluntly.
“No,” agreed Kingsley. “We’ll have to get that first.”
“And control it,” said Caroline.
“Perhaps,” suggested the Engineer, “we should go now. The others are
waiting for us. They have come so far, many of them from greater distances
than you.”
“How many are there?” asked Gary.
“Only a few,” said the Engineer, “so very few. Life is so seldom found
throughout the universe. The universe does not care for life. I sometimes
think life is merely a strange disease that should not be here at all, that
it is some accidental arrangement of matter that has no right to be. The
universe is so hostile to it that it would seem almost to be abnormal.
There are so few places where it can take root and live.”
“But throughout those billions of galaxies there must be many races,”
declared Kingsley.
“There may be many we do not know about,” said the Engineer, “but very few
that we can contact. It is so very hard to get in touch with them. And some
of them would be useless to us, races that had developed along entirely
different lines to achieve a different culture. Races that live without the
application of any of the practical sciences. Races that are sunken in the
welter of philosophy and thought. Races that have submerged themselves in
aesthetics and are untrained in science. The only ones we could reach were
those scientifically-minded races that could catch our message and could
reply to us… and after that could build the apparatus that would bring
them here.”
“Hell,” said Herb, “it takes all kinds of people to make a universe.”
The Engineer led them through an air lock which opened from the room into a
mighty corridor… a corridor that stretched away for inconceivable
distances, a vast place that held a brooding sense of empty space.
The suits functioned perfectly. Gravity and pressure were normal and the
suits themselves were far more comfortable than the spacesuits used back in
the solar system.
Slowly they trudged down the hall behind the Engineer.
“How long did it take to build this city?” asked Gary.
“Many years,” said the Engineer. “Since we came here.”
“Came here?” asked Gary. “Then this isn’t your native planet?”
“No,” said the Engineer, but he did not offer to explain.
“Say,” said Herb, “you didn’t ask our names. You don’t know who we are.”
Gary thought he detected a faint semblance of dry humor in the answer of
the Engineer.
“Names,” he said. “You mean personal designations? I know who you are
without knowing names.”
“Maybe,” said Herb, “but we can’t read thoughts like you can. We got to
have names.” He trotted along at the heels of the Engineer. “Don’t you