He said urgently, “I have something to show you. No attempt will be made to kill you until you have seen it. For your part, do nothing hasty, take no action, whatever power you have, until you have gased with understanding.”
He was aware of Meewan’s giving him an astounded glance.
“Power!” exclaimed the designer and it was like a curse. “The power he has!”
Czinczar paid no attention. This was his own special secret, and there could be no delay.
“Guards “he said “bring the box over here.” It was soaking wet when they brought it. It left a dirty trail of water on the priceless rug, and a pool began to accumulate immediately in the place where it was set down. There was a delay while sweating men pried off the top. Even the guards at far doors strained to see the contents. A gasp of horror broke the tension of waiting.
What was inside was about eight feet long. Its width was indeterminable, for it seemed to have folds in its body that gave an impression of great size. It had obviously died only a short time before it was packed in ice. It looked fresh, almost alive, there in its case of ice, unhuman, staring with sightless eyes at the ornate ceiling.
“Where did you get it?” Clane asked at last.
“It was found on one of the moons – within hours after a strange ship was sighted.”
“How long ago?” The mutation spoke in a steady tone.
“Two years, Earth time.”
“It would seem that whoever was in the ship will have departed by now.”
Czinczar shook his head. “Miners found a second body exactly like this on a meteorite in a spacesuit – seven months ago.”
For a long time the mutation gazed down at the creature. Finally he looked, and his eyes met Czinczar’s waiting gaze. He said slowly, “What is your theory?”
“A nonhuman race of great scientific attainments. Ruthless, unfriendly – for there are reports of sudden destruction in outlying areas of Europa which puzzled me until this body was found … I tend to wonder if this might not be a second visitation to the solar system. I cannot give you briefly all the logical relationships I have visualized, but my feeling is that the civilization of the golden age was destroyed by the first visitation.”
Clane said, “I am glad that you have shown me this, but what is your purpose in doing so?
Czinczar drew a deep breath. And made his second move to avert the catastrophe suggested by every action and manner of this unorthodox prisoner. He said, “It would be a grave error for either of us to destroy each other’s armies.”
“You are asking for mercy?”
That was too strong to take. The barbarian showed his teeth in a snarl. “I am asking for common sense,” he said.
“It’s impossible” said Clane “The people must have their revenge. In victory they will accept nothng less than your death.”
The words brought an obscene curse from Meewan. “Czinczar,” he shouted “what is all this nonsense? I have never seen you like this. I follow no man who accepts defeat in advance. I’ll show you what we’ll do with this … this – ” He broke off, “Guards, put a spear into him.”
Nobody moved. The soldiers looked uneasily at Czinczar, who nodded coolly. “Go right ahead,” he said. “If he can be killed, I’d like to know.”
Still nobody moved. It was apparenfly too mild an order, or something of the leader’s tension had communicated to the men. They looked at each other, and they were standing there doubtfully when Meewan snatched a sword from one of them and turned toward the bound man.
That was as far as he got. Where he had been was a ball of light.
“Try,” came the voice of Clane “to use the rod of force against me.” A fateful pause. “Try. It won’t kill you.”
Czinczar raised the rod of force and pressed the activator. Nothing happened – Wait! The ball of light was growing brighter.
Clane’s voice split the silence tantalizingly. “Do you still not believe in the gods?”
“I am astonished,” said Czinczar “that you do not fear the spread of superstition more than the spread of knowledge. We so-called barbarians, “he said proudly,” despise you for your attempt to fence in the human spirit. We are freethinkers, and all your atomic energy will fail in the end to imprison us.”
He shrugged. “As for your control over that ball, I do not pretend to understand it.”
At last, he had shocked the mutation out of his ice-cold manner. “You actually,” said Clane incredulously, “do not believe in the atom gods?”
“Guards,” shouted Czinczar piercingly, “attack him from every side.”
The ball of light flickered but did not seem to move. There were no guards.
“Now do you believe?” Clane asked.
The barbarian looked haggard and old. But he shook his head. “I have lost the war,” he mumbled. “Only that I recognize. It is up to you to take up the mantle which has fallen from my shoulders.” He broke off. “What in the name of your gods is that ball?”
“It contains the entire sidereal universe.” Czinczar kint his brow and leaned forward as if he were trying to understand.
“The what universe?” he asked at last.
“When you look inside through a hollow tube,” Clane explained patiently, “you see stars. It’s like a window into space – only it’s not a window. It’s the universe itself.”
The barbarian leader looked genuinely bewildered, “This universe?” he said blankly.
Clane nodded but made no comment. It hadn’t been easy to grasp so vast an idea, even with the written explanations that he had found.
Czinczar shook his head. “You mean the Earth is in there?” He pointed at the glowing sphere.
“It’s a fourth-dimensional idea,” said Clane; and still he remained patient. He could recognize a bemused man when he saw one. It was not the moment to press any other point.
The barbarian narrowed his eyes and said at last, “How can you get a large object into a smaller one?” His tone appealed for a logical explanation.
Clane shrugged. “When largeness or smallness are illusions of viewpoints, the problem does not exist.”
Czinczar scowled at that and straightened. “I have been assuming,” he said, “that at this point in our relations you would be speaking nothing but truth. Evidently, you are not prepared to tell me anything valid about your weapon. Naturally, I reject this fanciful story.”
Clane shook his head but said nothing. He had given the only explanation he had, and it had run up against the other man’s magnificent realism. Not that he blamed the barbarian. Only gradually had he himself been able to accept the idea that matter and energy were different than they appeared to the sense perceptions of the body.
But now it was time to act, to force, to convince. The bonds fell from him as if they did not exist. He stood up, and now that crown among all the jewels of the ages rode above his head in a matchless perfect rhythm with his movements.
Czinczar said stubbornly, “It would be a mistake to kill any able-bodied man, slave or otherwise.”
Clane said, “The gods demand absolute surrender.”
Czinczar said in fury, “You fool, I am offering you the solar system! Has this monster in the box not changed your mind in the slightest degree?”
“It has.”
“But then -”
“I do not,” said Clane, believe in joint-leadership arrangements.”
A pause. Then Czinczar said, “You have come far – who once used atomic power merely to stay alive.”
“Yes,” said Clane, “I have come far.”
Czinczar frowned down at the thing in the box. “The real threat to Linn is there. Will you promise to try for the Lord Leadership?”
“I,” Clane said, “can promise nothing.”
They looked at each other, two men who almost understood each other. It was Czinczar who broke the silence. “I make an absolute surrender,” he said and it was a sigh, “to you and you alone, of all my forces – in the belief that you have the courage and common sense to shrik none of your new duties as Protector of the Solar System. It was a role,” he finished somewhat unnocessarily, suddenly gloomy, “that I originally intended for myself.”
In a well-guarded room in a remote suburb of Linn a core of energy rolled sedately back and forth along a narrow path. In all the solar system there was nothing else like that core. It looked small, but that was an illusion of man’s senses. The books that described it and the men who had written the books knew but a part of its secrets.
They knew that the micro-universe inside it pulsed with a multiform of minus forces. It reacted to cosmic rays and atomic energy like some insatiable sponge. No submolecular energy released in its presence could escape it. And the moment it reached its own strange variation of critical mass it could start a meson chain reaction in anything it touched.