_Earthman was dying of boredom; Hope had become
folly. Work merely a means to avoid insanity. And
death was the great reward ... until Cragin, step-son
of darkest space, dared the Barrier; dared to soar
beyond the X Ecliptic--to the machine-planet--where
The Owners grimly governed all the fading galaxies._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories November 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Earth's eyes still blinked in the bright sunlight in which they
suddenly gloried again; Earth's throats, no longer fevered and parched,
still wondered at the cool feel of fresh water, which had not trickled
down them for more than five centuries. Earth's minds were still
ignorant of the answer; they knew only that this was Life, although
they had failed by themselves in cheating Death, and had already
calculated the dimensions for their graves.
The small calendar on the podium said Sunday, June 9, 3024. Cragin
placed a small black notebook beside it. Neither his carriage nor mien
were those of the gaunt-faced, tall-browed men of science who sat,
ill-at-ease, mute, in the broadly-aisled tiers of the echo-whispering
auditorium. For Cragin was not one of them. He was young-old, something
of slate and steel; gray, something almost of legend and of the mystery
of Deep Space itself. He had the quiet voice of all men who had lived
their lives within arm's length of the Barrier.
"Gentlemen," he began, "I doubt if I have many of the scientific
answers you want. In calculated, scientific terms, I am not able to
tell you why there is water once more in the river beds, clean air to
breathe again, snow once more in winter and rain again in springtime.
I know little more than the simple facts that the grass is once more
green; that the hell-deserts have vanished. I have come here with
few heretofore unknown scientific phenomena which I know you seek to
explain the rekindling of the Sun and the replacement of Earth in its
old path around it.
"The President told me that all I say is to be recorded so that you can
pick it apart with the proverbial fine-tooth comb when I'm finished
to see if I've dropped some new hint on which you can go to work. He
told me personally that I'm your last hope for a solution to the riddle
of the Change, because I'm the only living man who ever took a ship
further than a light-year beyond the Barrier; because I've flown more
parsecs of Deep Space than anybody else; because I know more about
what's out there, and what is not, than you do.
"Add what I have to tell you to the many theories you've already
amassed but for which you can find no scientific proof in knowledge as
you know it, and you still may not have the kind of answer for which
you're looking. Not unless, gentlemen, the Change has taken place in
men as well as in the solar system in which their graves were once
already dug.
"If, somehow, the little I know is sufficient to give you your answer;
an answer which satisfies you completely, then the Change has been to
yourselves as well as the ground upon which you walk. If it is not,
then perhaps you may never have one.
"A little more than ten years ago, this is how it was...."
He opened the notebook.
* * * * *
"I don't think it's a runner, sir. Not unless they've found a new place
in Deep Space to bootleg their water. But we're hearing English all
right."
The communications lieutenant tried for a new track on the com-beam
and gambled that there were a few minutes of overload time left in the
amptubes. The staccato whisper faded altogether for a moment, then came
back a trifle stronger.
"Blow 'em out if you have to! Mister Grimes, stand by with auxiliary
communications." The Stellar Patrol captain readjusted his own headset
and waited. It was all there was to do. The drive had been cut; the
ship was vibrationless, soundless, and the crew's breath was shallow.
Grimes hunched over the auxiliary unit as though waiting for the main
amplifier to blow up in the lieutenant's face.
Then it came; weak, but distinct.
_Griffin calling ... this is Griffin calling--SFBB-3. Lost ... Fowler
Griffin dead. This is SFBB-3 can you hear me...._
"Good Lord, sir--"
"Mister Cragin! Can you estimate her position? Grimes, contact the
nearest base in this sector. Get a relay from Earth on the flight plan
of Special Flight Beyond Barrier Three. Mister Kramer, I want a running
plot of the track every three minutes. Cragin!"
The Captain punched the red FSA drive-room button and the Patrol ship
slid from her drift into a white-hot mushroom of speed. The tower deck
vibrated beneath Cragin's feet.
"She's further out than I've ever been, sir. I can give you an
approximate trajectory, but where she is it's suicide--"
"For how far out beyond the Barrier do you have exact knowledge of
critical warp speeds, Cragin?"
"A light-year maybe, sir. No more. Beyond that nothing makes sense;
beyond that the variables will shoot any comptometer on this type ship
to hell. Beyond the Barrier it's like tight-rope walking between the
dimensions and after you get just so far--"
"I know all that. How far out is she?"
"Fifty light-years anyway. Maybe two hundred. I can't tell. I think
she's holding for dear life to a critical. If she loses it, we lose her
for good."
"You think she'll make it to this side?"
"If she's lost, no, sir. She'll just keep on out there until--"
"Until?"
"Until her comptometers break down, until her drive is exhausted, until
she makes a mistake. Until eternity."
"Sir," Kramer broke in. "Three minutes since pick-up. Her trajectory's
whacky. She's sort of side-slipping in, but at the speed she's making,
she's going to miss Barrier just by the width of her skin. She'll
tangent off sure." Kramer thrust a hastily prepared three dimensional
plot-check forward.
"To bring her in we've got to go out and pick her up, sir," Cragin said.
"Grimes!"
"Here, sir." Grimes came up with a similar plot-check, described on a
regulation ship's form. The senior Patrol officer compared the two, the
flight plan and the running trajectory laid out by Kramer, and Cragin's
teeth glinted through his lips as they went slack in amazement.
"God, sir, that's impossible. It _ends_ at the square of light-speed!"
"Fowler Griffin is--was--one of Earth's topmost scientists. His work
is beyond question, Mister Cragin. More so, perhaps, than that of any
other. Your irreverence is out of order."
"Unintentional of course, sir."
"Plot the difference between Griffin's planned return and the
trajectory Kramer just tracked. Drive-room!"
The sleek Patrol ship quivered with the added thrust of her
auxiliaries; her needle-tip nose swung a half-minute to her own
three-quarter starboard axis.
"Can we pick her up, Cragin?"
"We'll have to go the limit."
"Then take over the panel, Mister Cragin. Kramer! Attempt return
communication!"
"As she sails, sir."
Cragin's thin, sensitive fingers flicked over the flight control panel
with a dexterity and familiarity that is born only of a million light
years of intimate, sometimes desperate familiarity, and the Patrol
ship's complex, high-strung nervous system responded as though it were
a part of the man who held its throbbing life in harness.
* * * * *
To Randolph Cragin, born under a dying sun and of a mother dead from
desert-parch even as her labor ceased, there had never been life worth
the living anywhere but in the cold, clean loneliness of Deep Space.
He had bought odd second-hand parts from a junk dealer to build the
first craft he had ever flown; he had made the moon with it before
its jets blew and left him with the gray scar that ran from his left
temple to the point of his square chin. He had been sixteen then, and
too old to scare, too young to deter. From then on, there had been
work in a lunar mine to pay for his next ship; then prospecting the
asteroids to pay for a better, faster one. There were five years of
hauling black muck from Venus and water crystal from the low ridges
of Mars before he had the money he needed to build the ship that
would take him into Deep Space for the first time, and a couple of
years after that doing routine commission jobs of surveying outlying
planetoid belts for the government to earn enough to keep his drive
alive, and when he thought of it, his body.
In between jobs, when he flew until he was broken again, Cragin found
out more about Deep Space and about the Barrier, beyond which only one
other beside himself had ventured, than any other man who lived. His
predecessor had not. To Cragin it was sort of a challenge--sometimes
more than a daring wanderlust, sometimes a little less, when he picked
new directions from sheer boredom. But beneath it all, there was
something that rebelled; that bordered on resentment, and at the same
time on awe. He had never known which was the cause of which, only that
the men of Earth (and they were the only men in this lonely system of
planets) were dying, and had long since ceased to be awed by anything,
or to be stirred beyond the narrow limits of their own complacency.
They had achieved all there was to achieve; death was to be their
reward. Hope had become folly; work a means to avoid insanity; science
the only comfort and pleasure, because it had been thoroughly mastered.
Except, perhaps, for the Barrier itself. Beyond it, Earth science had
little hold, its concepts little validity. It was therefore a worthless
waste, for it did not adhere to the facts that men said were true. And
Cragin had found it difficult to decide why it was that he had chosen
to let himself get swallowed up in it. Maybe for the sheer pleasure
of laughing because it was so easy (the comptometers did all the work
of plotting the warp paths and keeping the ship at the right critical
speeds so it wouldn't leave them and go plunging off into dimensions
from which there would be no return) maybe because he hadn't been as
positive as he was supposed to be that what was beyond the Barrier was
such a waste after all.
To keep himself occupied he remembered what there had been to learn; to
recam the comptometers in anticipation of the ever increasing speed of
warp shifts; how to change direction and yet keep a bearing on home;
how to fly some of it by himself, juggling equations in his head while
the comptometers cooled off.
Then two years ago he had joined the Patrol. Chasing water bootleggers
who stole from government reserves and sold at fantastic prices was
something he hadn't as yet had a hand in. That he had become an officer
in a year and a half instead of the usual six hadn't surprised him
much; if he weren't a captain in another year and a half he'd resign.
And dig the asteroids again maybe. It didn't matter.
"At Barrier in four minutes, sir. Grimes, stand by comptometer One with
her coordinates...."
Comptometer One rose from a deep hum below the range of hearing into
audibility. "Now, Mister Grimes!" Comptometer Two checked in and the
hum rose steadily to a high pitched whine. Three came in.
"I've got her on the radar track, sir! There she is--good Lord!"
"Signal her to cut her drive before we lose her altogether. Grimes--"
But Grimes was too slow at resetting comptometer cams. Cragin plotted
a trajectory in his head and kept alert for the least change in
volume of the comps. Deliberately he brought the nose of the hurtling
Patrol craft swinging about under the grazing touch of his fingertips
and sought to keep the big ship on her warp while he estimated an
intersection point.
"Sir," Kramer was howling, "I can't raise--yes, there! She's cut her
drive. But she's not bow jetting a squirt!"
"Just get the M-fields ready. I'll tell you when," Cragin said. If
there had been any excitement in his voice before, it had disappeared.
He knew they'd catch her now. He was on the Patrol ship's back and he
knew he could ride it down.
"You've got maybe a dozen seconds, Cragin," the captain told him. "At a
drift her critical will be shot to blazes--"
"M-fields!"
The Patrol ship jolted, and Comptometer Five checked in and rose to a
scream as the struggle to maintain critical speed with the suddenly
increased load was fought. And won.
Cragin manually checked in Six just to make sure, and kicked both ships
into the trajectory that would fall them through the Barrier.
Then it was all over, and a tiny, bullet-shaped, explorer-type craft of
less than a fifth the Patrol ship's length was secured alongside, her
aft tubes still smoking.
Cragin relinquished his command and waited, while two space suited crew
members picked their way along the M-field on their portable mag units.
It took them less than ten minutes to get back. They carried another
form between them; a form smaller than a man's, and limp.
"It's his daughter all right," Cragin said as the Patrol captain waited
at his side while the two crewmen undogged the girl's fully-transparent
helmet. "Name is Lin, I think. Lin Griffin, student of her father's,
and up with the best of 'em, they say. What in hell they were doing out
there only she'll be able to tell us. If she'll tell us."
"If she lives to," the captain said.
The oval shaped, sharp featured face was pasty with space fatigue,
and the large, wide set eyes were closed in unconsciousness. The
short-bobbed, copper-hued hair that clung close to her slender neck
and set off the wide forehead was still well groomed, but the high
cheekbones on either side of her small nose showed sharply through
the taut, smooth skin that covered them, and bespoke perhaps days of
near exhaustion. Cragin fastened his eyes on the girl's wide, generous
mouth, waiting for some sign of returning consciousness. But there was
none.
"Hardly out of her teens," the captain muttered. "Too damn young to
die. Get her to my quarters; notify the ship's space surgeon and have
him put a corpsman on full duty. Want to know soon as she comes around."
"Aye, sir."