"No, Jery Delvin. Your mind sees me. Your eyes alone could not possibly
view me since I am never entirely here to be viewed. Your eyes see
one part of me, then another, then another and another. But your mind
rejects the idea that I am four separate entities, and sees me as I am,
a unit."
"You're here, you say, but you're not here, too?" I choked, feeling
positively giddy.
"I am not a three-dimensional creature," said the Martian. "We whom you
call the Ancients are existing in four dimensions."
"I thought Einsteinian physics says that _time_ is the fourth
dimension," I said slowly.
"It is not _time_," said the Martian. "It is _place_ that is the fourth
dimension. What is _here_, Jery Delvin? Or _there_? Remember, there is
no _here_ or _there_ except in relationship to something else. If only
one small globe of rock comprised existing matter, Jery Delvin, where
would it be?"
"It--That's silly. _One_ thing can't be anywhere!" I said. "It'd just
be floating in a void." Trying to picture such a void made my brain
whirl. I gave it up.
"I'm glad you understand," said the Martian. "Very well, then. We, your
Ancients, are existing in a perfect _here-ness_, of which you can have
no concept at all. We are living in not _a_ location, but in _location_
itself."
"It's no use," I said. "I can't even picture it."
"You're not supposed to," said the Martian, with a mechanical smile of
contempt. "Even your mind, Jery Delvin, cannot fathom the magnitude of
our being."
"Hold on a minute!" I said, changing the subject. "Clatclit told me
that you expected to compel my cooperation by keeping the Space Scouts
your prisoners unless I obeyed you."
"That is correct, Jery Delvin. And so, our desire is that you--"
"Damn it!" I exploded. "Stop taking so much for granted! Before I even
scratch where it itches to please you guys, I want to see those kids!
And in damned good shape, too!"
Snow held onto my arm and trembled. This was it. Now we'd know for sure
if the boys were all right.
The Martian looked exasperated, but then he reached an arm out from
himself--I couldn't tell exactly, without getting a blinding headache,
just which way his arm went, left, right, up or down. But he reached
away from himself in some direction or other, and the next moment,
the shimmering blur of metallic flooring between him and us gave way
to a red-bronze platform of parabolite which rose like a sluggish
elevator on close-intervalled narrow rods of the same mineral. Then, as
the apparatus halted, I realized that these rods were more than just
supports for that slab of rock. They were bars.
And huddled together in this escape-free cage, I saw the fifteen
missing Space Scouts.
"Snow!"
One of the boys, his hair as raven as Snow's was blonde, tore away from
the group and rushed over to the bars, jamming his arms between them to
reach out for her.
"Ted!" Snow cried, and rushed over to him. It was kind of awkward,
embracing with the bars in the way, but they did it anyhow.
"Ted, dear Ted! Are you all right?"
"Yeah," he said, with a note of uncertainty. "Yeah, I guess we are.
Only, I was almost giving up on you."
"Have you," the Martian's icy voice cut into the reunion, "seen quite
enough?"
"Hold your horses!" I hollered at him through the cage. "She hasn't
checked him for broken bones, yet!"
The Martian, whether out of patience or alien incomprehension of my
sarcasm, left the cage where it was, and stood waiting.
"I knew you'd get my message, Snow!" said Ted eagerly, quite forgetting
his doubts of a few seconds before. "I just knew it. When do we get out
of here, hey? We want to go home!"
Apparently adventure lost its tang when the cage had first been lowered
into the--the whatever it was that served us as a floor. The other boys
had come up to the bars, now, all of them looking at Snow with longing,
as the next best thing to a human-type mother.
"Oh, you poor kids," Snow sobbed suddenly. "Have they been feeding you?
When did you last wash your face, Ted?"
"They don't feed us at all!" Ted said sorrowfully. "It's been weeks now
since we ran out of candy, and--"
"Jery Delvin!" the Martian's voice interrupted imperiously. "Before
that look on your woman's face erupts into some more of her tiresome
vituperation, will you explain to her what a metabolic stasis is?"
"Sure," I said, folding my arms. "As soon as you explain it to me!"
The Martian seemed to be gathering himself for a cry of utter
exasperation. Then he caught hold of himself and said with rigid calm,
"We merely have held the children within a field of radiation that
obviates the necessity of their taking alimental nourishment."
Snow looked over her shoulder at me, wonderingly.
"He means, honey, that they fixed it somehow so the kids didn't need to
eat. I guess it was simpler than running a catering service."
"Didn't need to eat!" she exploded. "Doesn't that blob of black
sparklers know that growing boys need food to grow!"
"There's no need to be redundant!" said the Martian.
"To what?" she cried, standing back from the cage to glare at him the
better, with arms akimbo. The Martian took this golden opportunity to
let the cage drop suddenly back out of our ken. The shimmering blur of
metallic luster was once more at our feet.
"Oh!" she cried, stepping forward and staring down. "Ted! Teddy!"
"Jery, Jery, Jery," Snow murmured tearfully, turning about and
burrowing her nose into my chest, while I held her helplessly. "He
looked s-so hungry!"
I decided to let her sob. Neither I nor the Martian, no matter what our
brain power, could drive this fixed notion out of her pretty little
head.
"Now that you have seen them," said the Martian, "perhaps we can get to
the business at hand?"