and making it stay put.”
“You could use it to control the energy,” rumbled Kingsley. “I understand
that well enough. When the universes begin to rub you could trap the
incoming energy in an artificial universe. The energy would destroy that
universe, but you’d have another ready for it. What I can’t understand is
how you form this artificial fourth-dimensional space.”
“It isn’t artificial,” snapped Gary. “It’s real… as real as the universe
we live in. But it’s made by human beings instead of by some law we have no
inkling of.”
He pointed at the sheet of calculations. “Perhaps the secret of all the
universe is on that sheet of paper,” he declared. “Maybe that’s the key to
how the universe was formed.”
“Maybe,” rumbled Kingsley, “and maybe not. There may be many ways to do
it.”
“One,” said Gary, “is good enough for me.”
“There’s just one thing,” said Caroline, “that bothers me. We don’t know
anything about the fifth-dimensional inter-space. We can imagine that its
laws are different from our own. Vastly different. But how do they differ?
What kind of energy would be formed out there? What form would it take?”
She looked from one to the other of them. “That would make a lot of
difference,” she declared.
“It would,” agreed Kingsley. “It would make a lot of difference. It would
be like setting a trap for some animal. You might set one for a rat and
catch a bear… or the other way around.”
“The Hellhounds know,” said Tommy. “They know how to navigate in the
inter-space.”
“But they wouldn’t tell us,” said Gary. “They don’t want the universe to be
saved. They want it to be wrecked so they can build a new world out of the
wreckage.”
“It might be light, or matter, or heat, or motion, or it might be something
that’s entirely different,” said Caroline. “It’s not impossible it would be
something else, some new fearful form of energy with which we are entirely
unacquainted. Conditions would be just as different out in inter-space as
fourth-dimensional conditions differ from our three-dimensional world.”
“And to be able to control it we would have to have some idea as to what it
is,” said Kingsley.
“Or what it would become when it entered the hyperspace,” said Gary. “It
might be one kind of energy out there, an entirely different kind when it
entered our universe.”
“The people of the other universe don’t seem to know,” Tommy pointed out.
“Even if they are the ones who found out about the universes drifting
together. They don’t seem to be able to find out too much about it.”
Gary glanced around the laboratory, a mighty vaulted room that glowed with
soft, white light… a room with gleaming tiers of apparatus, with mighty
machines, great engines purring with tremendous power, uncanny structures
that almost defied description.
“The funniest thing about the whole business,” he declared, “is why the
Engineers themselves can’t make any progress. Why do they have to call us
in? With all of this equipment, with the knowledge they already hold, it
ought to be a cinch for them to do almost anything.”.
“There’s something queer here,” Herb declared. “I’ve been snooping around a
bit and this city is enough to set you batty. There isn’t any traffic in
the streets. You can travel for hours and you don’t see a single Engineer.
No business houses, no theaters, no nothing. All the buildings are empty.
Just empty buildings. A city of empty buildings.” He puffed out his breath.
“Like a city that was built and waiting for someone. Waiting for someone
who never came.”
Something akin to terror crossed Gary’s mind. A queer, haunted feeling… a
pity for those magnificent white buildings standing all untenanted.
“A city built for billions of people,” said Herb. “And no one in it. Just a
handful of Engineers. Probably not more than a hundred thousand
altogether.”
Kingsley was clenching and opening his fists again, rumbling in his throat.
“It does seem queer,” he said, “that they never found the answer. With all
their knowledge, all their scientific apparatus.”
Gary looked at Caroline and smiled. A wisp of a girl. But one who could
bend space and time until it formed a sphere… or, rather, a hypersphere.
A girl who could mold space as she wanted it, who could play tricks with
it, make it do what she wanted it to do. She could set up a tiny replica of
the universe, a little private universe that belonged to her and no one
else. No one before, he was certain, ever had dared to think of doing that.
He looked at her again, a swift, sure look that saw the square-cut chin,
the high forehead, the braided raven strands about her head. Was Caroline
Martin greater than the Engineers? Could she master a problem that they
couldn’t even touch? Was she, all unheralded, the master mind of the entire
universe? Did the hope of the universe lie within her mind?
It seemed impossible. And yet, she had thought of time and space for nearly
forty lifetimes. With nothing but a brain to work with, with no tools, no
chance of experimentation – all alone, with nothing but her thoughts, she
had solved the deep-shrouded mysteries of space and time. Never dreaming,
perhaps, that such knowledge could be used to a certain purpose.
Metal feet scraped across the laboratory floor and Gary whirled to come
face to face with Engineer 1824. The metal man had advanced upon them
unawares.
His thought came to them, clear, calm, unhurried thought, devoid of all
emotion, impersonal, yet with a touch of almost human warmth.
“I heard your thoughts,” he said, “and I am afraid that you might think I
meant to hear them. But I am very glad I did. You wonder why the Engineers
brought you here. You wonder why the Engineers can’t do this work unaided.”
They stood guiltily, like schoolboys caught at some forbidden act.
“I will tell you,” the thought went on, “and I hope you will understand. It
is difficult to tell you. Hard to tell you, because we Engineers are full
of pride. Conditions being different, we would never tell you.”
It sounded like a confession, and Gary stared at the metal man in stricken
surprise, but there was no sign of expression upon the metal face, no hint
of thought within the glowing eyes.
“We are an old and tired people,” said the Engineer. “We have lived too
long. We have always been a mechanistic people and as the years went on we
became even more so. We plod from one thing to another. We have no
imagination. The knowledge that we have, the powers we hold, were inherited
by us. Inherited from a great race, the greatest race that ever lived. We
have added something to that knowledge, but so very little. So very, very
little when you think of all the time that has passed away since it was
handed to us.”
“Oh!” cried Caroline and then put her hand up as if to cover her mouth, and
it clanged against the quartz of the helmet. She looked at Gary and he saw
pity in her eyes.
“No pity for us, please,” said the Engineer. “For we are a proud people and
have the right to be. We have kept an ancient trust and kept it well. We
have abided by the heritage that is ours. We have kept intact the charge
that was given us.”
In the little silence Gary had a sense of ancient things, of old plays
played out upon a stage that had dissolved in dust these many thousand
years. A sense of an even greater race upon an even greater planet. An old,
old heraldry carried down through cosmic ages by these metal men.
“But you are young,” declared the Engineer. “Your race is young and
unspoiled. You have fallen into no grooves. Your mind is free. You are full
of imagination and initiative. I sensed it when I talked with you back in
your own system. And that is what we need… that is what we must have.
Imagination to grasp the problem that is offered. Imagination to peer
around the corner. A dreaming contemplation of what is necessary to be
done, and then the vigorous initiative to meet the challenge that the dream
may bring.”
Again a silence.
“That is why we are so glad to have you here,” went on the Engineer. “That
is why I know I can tell you what must be told.”
He hesitated for a moment and a million fears speared at Gary’s brain.
Something that must be told! Something they hadn’t known before. An even
greater threat to face?
They waited breathlessly.
“You should know,” said the Engineer, “but I almost fear to tell you. It is
this: Upon you, and you alone, must rest the fate of the universe. You are