the only ones to save it.”
“Upon us,” cried Tommy. “Why, that is mad! You can’t mean it!”
Kingsley’s hands were clenched and the bearish rumble was rising in his
throat. “What about those others?” he asked. “All those others you brought
here, along with us?”
“I sent them back,” declared the Engineer. “They were no help to us.”
Gary felt the cold wind from space reach out and flick his face again. Man
– and Man alone – stood between the universe and destruction. Little, puny
Man. Man, with a body so delicate that he would be smashed to a bloody pulp
if exposed unprotected to the naked gravity of this monstrous world. Little
Man, groping toward the light, groping, feeling, not knowing where he went.
And then the blast of trumpets sounded in the air – the mythical trumpets
calling men to crusade. The ringing peal that for the last ten thousand
years has sent Man out to war, clutching at his sword.
“But why?” Kingsley was thundering.
“Because,” said the Engineer, “we could not work with them. They could not
work with one another. We could hardly understand them. Their process of
intelligence was so unfathomable, their thought process so twisted, that
understanding was almost impossible. How we ever made them understand
sufficiently to bring them here, I will never know. Many times we almost
despaired. Their minds are so different from ours, so very, very different.
Poles apart in thought.”
Why, sure, thought Gary, that would be the way one would expect to find it.
There was no such thing as parallel physical evolution, why should there be
parallel mental evolution?
“Not that their mentality is not as valid as our intelligence,” said the
Engineer. “Not that they might not have even a greater grasp of science
than we. But there could have been no co-ordination, no understanding for
us to work together.”
“But,” said Caroline, “we can understand your thoughts. You can understand
ours. And yet we are as far removed from you as they.”
The Engineer said nothing.
“And you look like us,” said Tommy, quietly. ‘We are protoplasm and you are
metal, but we each have arms and legs…”
“It means nothing,” said the Engineer. “Absolutely nothing how a thing is
made, the shape that one is made in.” There was almost an edge of anger in
his thoughts.
“Don’t you worry, old man,” said Herb. ‘We’ll save the universe. I don’t
know how in hell we’ll do it, but we’ll save it for you.”
“Not for us,” the Engineer corrected, “but for those others. For all life
that now exists within the universe. For all life that in time to come may
exist within the universe.”
“There,” said Gary, hardly realizing that he spoke aloud, “is an ideal big
enough for any man.”
An ideal. Something to fight for. A spur that kept Man going on, striving,
fighting his way ahead.
Save the universe for that monstrosity in the glass sphere with its
shifting vapors, for the little, wriggling, slug-like things, for the
mottled terror with the droopy mouth and the glint of humor in his eyes.
“But how?” asked Tommy. “How are we going to do it?”
Kingsley ruffled at him. “We’ll do it,” he thundered.
He wheeled on the Engineer. “Do you know what kind of energy would exist
within the inter-space?” he asked.
“No,” said the Engineer, “I cannot tell you that. Perhaps the Hellhounds.
But that’s impossible.”
“Is there any other place?” asked Gary in a voice cold as steel. “Anyone
else who could tell us?”
“Yes,” said the Engineer. “There is one other race. I think that they might
tell you. But not yet. Not yet. It is too dangerous.”
“We don’t care,” said Herb. “We humans eat up danger.”
“Let us try it,” said Gary. “Just a couple of us. If something happened,
the others would be left to carry on…”
“No,” said the Engineer, and there was a terrible finality in the single
thought.
“Why can’t we go out ourselves and find out?” asked Herb. “We could make a
little universe just for ourselves. Float right out into this
fifth-dimension space and study the energy that we find.”
“Splendid,” purred Kingsley. “Absolutely splendid. Except there isn’t any
energy yet. Won’t be until the two universes rub and then it will be too
late.”
“Yes,” said Caroline, smiling at Herb, “we have to know before the energy
is produced. When the universes rub, it will flood in upon us in such great
quantity that we’ll be wiped out almost immediately. The first contracting
rush of space and time will engulf us. Remember, we’re just inside the
universal rim.”
“I do not entirely understand,” said the Engineer. “You spoke of making a
universe. Can you make a universe? Bend space and time around a
predetermined mass? I am afraid you jest. That would be difficult.”
Gary started. Was it possible that Caroline had done something an Engineer
thought impossible to do? Standing here, it seemed so simple, so
commonplace that space-time could be bent into a hypersphere. Nothing
wonderful about it. Just something to be slightly astonished at and argued
about. Just a few equations spread upon a sheet of paper.
“Sure we can,” bellowed Kingsley. “This little lady has it figured out.”
“The little lady,” commented Herb, “is a crackajack at figures.”
The Engineer reached out his hand to take the sheet of calculations that
Kingsley was handing to him. But as he reached out his arm little red
lights began to blink throughout the laboratory and in their ears sounded a
shrill, high-pitched whine – a whine that held a note of sinister alarm.
“What’s that?” yelled Kingsley, dropping the sheet.
The thought of the Engineer came to them as calm as ever, as absolutely
devoid of emotion as it bad always been.
“The Hellhounds,” he said “The Hellhounds are attacking us.”
As he spoke, Gary watched the sheet of paper flutter to the floor, a little
fluttering sheet that held the key to the riddle of the universe scratched
upon it in the black scrawlings of a soft-lead pencil.
The Engineer moved across the laboratory to a panel. His metallic fingers
reached out, deftly punched at studs. A wall screen lighted up and on it
they saw the bowl of sky above the city. Ships were shooting up and
outward, great silver ships that had grim lines of power about them. Up
from the roofs they arrowed out into space, squadron after squadron,
following a grim trail to the shock of combat. Going out to meet the
Hellhounds.
The Engineer made adjustments on the panel and they were looking deeper
into space, far out into the darkness where the atmosphere had ended. A
tiny speck of silver appeared and rapidly leaped toward them, dissolving
into a cloud of ships. Thousands of them.
“The Hellhounds,” said the Engineer.
Gary heard Herb suck in his breath, saw Kingsley’s hamlike hands clenching
and unclenching.
“Stronger than ever,” said the Engineer. “Perhaps with new and more deadly
weapons, perhaps more efficient screens. I am afraid, so very much afraid,
that this means the end of us… and of the universe.”
“How far away are they?” asked Tommy.
“Only a few thousand miles now,” said the Engineer. “Our alarm system warns
us when they are within ten thousand miles of the surface. That gives us
time to get our fleet out into space to meet them.”
“Is there anything we can do?” asked Gary.
“We are doing everything we can,” said the Engineer.
“But I don’t mean you,” said Gary. “Is there anything the five of us can
do? Any war service we can render you?”
“Not now,” said the Engineer. “Perhaps later there will be something. But
not now.”
He adjusted the screen again and in it they watched the defending ships of
the Engineers shooting spaceward, maneuvered into far-flung battle lines –
like little dancing motes against the black of space.
In breathless attention they kept their eyes fixed on the screen, saw the
gleaming points of light draw closer together, the invaders and the
defenders. Then upon the screen they saw dancing flashes that were not
reflections from the ships, but something else – knifing flashes that
reached out, probed and stabbed and slashed, like a searchlight’s beam cuts
into the night. A tiny pinpoint of red light flashed momentarily and then
went out. Another flamed, like lightning bugs of a summer night, except the
flash was red and seemed filled with a terrible violence.
“Those flashes,” breathed Caroline. ‘What are they?”
“Exploding ships,” said the Engineer. “Screens break down and the energy
drains out and then an atomic bomb or ray finds its way into them.”
“Exploding ships,” said Gary. “But whose?”
“How can I tell?” asked the Engineer. “It may be theirs or ours.”
Even as he spoke a little ripple of red flashes ran across the screen.
Chapter Ten
HALF the city was in ruins, swept and raked by the stabbing rays that