fellows have names?” he asked.
“We are designated by numbers,” said the Engineer. “Purely as a matter of
record. The individual doesn’t count so much here as he does where you came
from.”
“Numbers,” said Herb. “Just like a penitentiary.”
“If it is necessary for you to designate me,” said the Engineer, “my number
is 1824. I should have told you sooner. I am sorry I forgot.”
They halted before a massive door and the Engineer sounded a high-pitched
thought-wave that beat fantastically against their minds. The great door
slid back into the wall and they walked into a room that swept away in
lofty reaches of vast distances, with a high-vaulted ceiling that formed a
sky-like cup above them.
The room was utterly empty of any sort of furniture. Just empty space that
stretched away to the dim, far walls of soaring white. But in its center
was a circular elevation of that same white stone, a dais-like structure
that reared ten feet or more above the white-paved floor.
Upon the dais stood several of the Engineers and around them were grouped
queer, misshapen things, nightmares snatched from some book of olden
horrors, monstrosities that made Gary’s blood run cold as be gazed upon
them.
He felt Caroline’s fingers closing on his arm. “Gary,” her whisper was thin
and weak, “what are they?”
“Those are the ones that we have called,” said the Engineer. “The ones who
have come so far to help us in our fight.”
“They look like something a man would want to step on,” said Herb, and
there was a horrible loathing in his words.
Gary stared at them, fascinated by their very repulsiveness. Lords of the
universe, he thought. These are the things that represent the cream of the
universe’s intelligence. These things that looked, as Herb had said, like
something you would want to step on.
The Engineer was walking straight ahead, toward the wide, shallow steps
that led up to the dais.
“Come on,” rumbled Kingsley. “Maybe we look as bad to them.”
They crossed the hall and tramped up the steps. The Engineer crossed to the
other Engineers.
“These,” he said, “are the ones who have come from the outer planet of the
solar system we have watched so many years.”
The Engineers looked at them. So did the other things. Gary felt his skin
crawling under the scrutiny.
“They are welcome,” came the thought-wave of one of the Engineers. “You
have told them how glad we are to have them here?”
“I have told them,” declared Engineer 1824.
There were chairs for the Earthlings. One of the Engineers waved an
invitation to them and they sat down.
Gary looked around. They were the only ones who had chairs. The Engineers,
apparently tireless, remained standing. Some of the other things stood,
too. One of them stood on a single leg with his second leg tucked tight
against his body – like a dreaming stork – except that he didn’t look like
a stork. Gary tried to classify him. He wasn’t a bird or a reptile or a
mammal. He wasn’t anything a human being had ever imagined. Long, skinny
legs, great bloated belly, head with unkempt hair falling over brooding,
dead-fish eyes.
One of the Engineers began to speak.
“We have gathered here,” said the thought-waves, “to consider ways and
means of meeting one of the greatest dangers…”
Just like a political speaker back on Earth, thought Gary. He tried to make
out which one of the Engineers was talking, but there was no facial
expression, no movement of any sort which would determine which one of them
the speaker might be. He tried to pick out Engineer 1824, but all the
Engineers looked exactly alike.
The talk rumbled on, a smooth roll of thought explaining the situation that
they faced, the many problems it presented, the need of acting at once.
Gary studied the other things about them, the loathsome, unnatural things
that had been brought here from the unguessed depths of the universe. He
shuddered and felt cold beads of sweat break out upon his body as he looked
at them.
Several of them were immersed in tanks filled with liquids. One tank boiled
and steamed as if with violent chemical action; another was cloudy and
dirty-looking; another was clear as water and in it lurked a thing that
struck stark terror into Gary’s soul. Another was confined in a huge glass
sphere through which shifted and swirled a poisonous-appearing atmosphere.
Gary felt cold fingers touch his spine as he watched the sphere and
suddenly was thankful for the shifting mists within it, for through them he
had caught sight of something that he was certain would have shattered
one’s mind to look upon without the shielding swirl of fog within the
glass.
In a small glass cage set upon a pedestal of stone were several writhing,
grub-like things that palpitated disgustingly. Squatting on its haunches
directly across from Gary was a monstrosity with mottled skin and drooling
mouth, with narrow, slitted eyes and slimy features. He fastened his
pinpoint gaze upon the Earthman and Gary quickly looked away.
Nothing resembled mankind, nothing except the Engineers. Here were things
that were terrible caricatures of the loathsome forms of Earth life, other
beings that bore not even the most remote resemblance to anything that
mankind had ever seen or imagined.
Was this a fair sample of the intelligence the universe contained? Did he
and Kingsley and Caroline appear as disgusting, as fearsome in the eyes as
these other denizens of the universe as they appeared to his?
He shot a quick glance at Caroline. She was listening intently, her chin
cupped in one hand, her eyes upon the Engineers. Just as well that way, he
thought. She didn’t see these other things.
The Engineer had stopped talking and silence fell upon the room. Then a new
impulse of thought beat against Gary’s brain, thought that seemed cold and
cruel, thought that was entirely mechanistic and consciousless. He glanced
swiftly around, trying to find who was speaking. It must, he decided, be
the thing in the glass sphere. He could not understand the thought, grasped
just vague impressions of atomic structures and mathematics that seemed to
represent enormous pressure used to control surging energy.
The Engineer was talking again.
“Such a solution,” he was saying, “would be possible on a planet such as
yours, where an atmosphere many miles in depth, composed of heavy gases,
creates the pressures that you speak of. While we can create such pressures
artificially, we could not create or maintain them outside the laboratory.”
“What the hell,” asked Herb, “are they arguing about?”
“Shut up,” hissed Gary, and the photographer lapsed into shamefaced
silence.
The cold, cruel thought was arguing, trying to explain a point that Gary
could only guess at. He looked at Caroline, wondering if she understood.
Her face was twisted into tiny lines of concentration.
The cold stream of thought had stopped and another thought broke in, a
little piping thought. Perhaps, thought Gary, one of the little slug-like
creatures in the glass cage.
Disgusting little things!
Gary looked at the mottled, droopy-eyed creature that squatted opposite
him. It raised its head and in the beady eyes he imagined that he caught a
glimmer of amusement.
“By the Lord,” he said to himself, “he thinks it’s funny, too.”
This arguing of hideous entities! The piping thoughts of slimy things that
should be wriggling through some stagnant roadside ditch back on the planet
Earth. The cold thought of the brain-blasting thing that lived on a planet
covered by miles of swirling gases. The pinpoint eyes of the being with the
mottled skin.
Cosmic Crusade! He laughed to himself, deep in his throat. This wasn’t the
way he had imagined it. He had thought of gleaming ships of war, of
stabbing rays, of might arrayed against might, a place where courage would
be at a premium.
But there was nothing to fight. No physical thing. Nothing a man could get
at. Another universe, a mighty thing of curving space and time… that was
the enemy. A man simply couldn’t do anything about a thing like that.
“This place,” Herb whispered to him, “is giving me the creeps.”
Chapter Nine
“WE CAN do it,” said Caroline. She flicked a pencil against a sheet of
calculations. “This proves it,” she declared.
Kingsley bent over her shoulder to look at the sheet. “If you don’t mind,”
he said, “would you lead me through it all again. Go slowly, please. I find
it hard to grasp a lot of it.”
“Kingsley,” said Herb, “you’re just an amateur. To get as good as she is
you’d have to think for forty lifetimes.”
“You embarrass me,” she said. “It’s very simple. It’s really very simple.”
“I’ll say it’s simple,” said Tommy. “Just a little matter of bending space
and time into a tiny universe. Wrapping it about a selected bit of matter