Randolph Warren raised a shaking hand to his head, and brushed back the
hair that had fallen over his eyes. His mind was muddled, uncertain.
There was a feeling of weirdness, of inexplicable things about him
as he lay on the floor, even before he opened his eyes. The thick,
soft carpeting of semi-sponge rubber was comfortable under him, and
languorously he opened his eyes. He stared, raised a hand before his
eyes, and stared harder.
His hand was a brilliant, flaming violet. His hair was a pale, virulent
shade of green. He was wearing dark red shoes, dark orange trousers
with twisting threads of a bright turkey red. His belt was pale violet.
The gold buckle was slightly greenish in cast, but otherwise unchanged.
Lying on the floor nearby, and slightly stirring now was Putney. His
lips were a dark violet, his hands the same bright violet that showed
on Warren's own. His hair, normally brown, was now colored green,
several shades darker, and much more pleasant in appearance than
Warren's.
What Had Happened to the Control Room?
The physicist gasped, and sat up. The control room of his ship
of course. But what had happened to it? It looked familiar, yet
unfamiliar. The angles and proportions were wholly, utterly wrong.
And it was dark. The lights were giving a pale orange glow, but the
window opened on a jet emptiness. Warren knew it was in open space,
he could recognize that quality of empty blackness, but there was
something very wrong with the sky, too. The very stars in their courses
seemed vastly changed. He could not recognize a single familiar star, a
single known constellation.
He heard a gasp of astonishment. Putney was staring at his hand with
wide eyes. His eyes were bright, light blue, where they should be
white, and very dark green where they had been black.
"You awake?" said Warren. "I felt the same way when I first saw my
hand. Look at those beautiful red shoes you have on. How do you like my
orange-and-red trousers?" His voice though, did not convey any sound of
jocularity, but a feeling of helplessness.
"Where under the sun are we--what's happened?" gasped Putney.
"To the first I'd say, I doubt that we are, and to the second, I could
guess, but I won't." The helpless tone of stupified surprise was
rapidly leaving Warren's voice, with a note of excitement following
close on its heels.
Shouts and cries of amazement were coming from the rear of the ship.
"All men up here!" sang out Warren. Presently men began to file into
the room. In a short time ten of the weirdest sights that ever met the
human eye stood grouped before the two scientists. They were gaping
at each other in speechless amazement. McLaurin, the burly Scots
mechanician, was the prize specimen, however. He had on pale pink
trousers, a light orange coat, blue shoes with red soles, and was now
equipped with violet hair. A short time before it had been very red.
Warren burst out laughing at the sight of the dour Scot clad in this
brilliant array of pastel tints. "Lord, Mac, was ever such a sight
before?"
"An' o' course ye'r a beauty ye'rself," replied the Scotsman. "An' what
may it mean?"
"Carl--you're somewhat of an astronomer, take a look out of the
observation window. What stars do you recognize?"
"None--not a one!" gasped the young astro-physicist, after a keen
survey of the star-field.
"I'm afraid to turn the ship around right now, don't know what will
happen, if my theory is right, anything might. Now where would you say
the sun lay from here?"
No Sun to Be Seen at Any Angle
Carl looked briefly out of the window which ran around three sides of
the control room, and finally pointed straight astern. "Must be behind,
we'd see it if it were anywhere else."
"Mac, run back and look."
The mechanist was gone scarcely thirty seconds before he came back, his
face paled to a slightly lighter shade of violet.
"I can see through three other angles, Doctor Warren, but there is na
sun!" he reported.
The men stared at him in horror. "No sun? My God, where are we?"
demanded one.
"I can't say, but I can guess," replied Warren quickly. "This thing
will get on your nerves if you let it, but take it easy. We are in a
space ship, the most powerful men ever knew. We are somewhere, where,
obviously, this space ship, _plus_ that little ball of fire, brought
us. Therefore it's a reasonable conclusion that this same space ship,
_plus_ an exactly similar ball of fire, which we can create, will take
us back. Is it not?"
If Warren's theories were correct, it was not necessarily true, but the
men nodded, hopefully.
"My theory is that we have gone where that matter went! Into another
space! Not quite where that matter went, for remember we went through
that, merely out of our own space, where there was no matter, and
where no matter could exist. We exist, therefore we are in a space
where matter can exist, but the conditions are different here, hence
our violet faces, the weird coloring of our clothes and hair, and
the feeling of unfamiliarity with this very ship we built. But the
conditions are not so different that we cannot understand them, and
live till we can control them.
Locating Themselves in the New Space
"The first thing to do is to locate ourselves in this new space. We
must take photographs. First, however, we must see that conditions
permit our plates to work. This ship is completely stocked, luckily,
so we have plenty of time to work. We must be in some part of this new
space which corresponds with the solar system in ours.
"To get our position, remember that our own space is a curved
hyper-sphere, a fourth-dimensional sphere, roughly speaking, whose
shape is maintained by the pull of the multitude of bodies, stars and
worlds, which fill it. Now here are other stars--and probably other
worlds. This, then, would be a space similar to ours, as one world is
similar to another. Matter cannot exist _between_ the two, but can
exist in either, just as a man could not exist _between_ Earth and
Venus for instance, but, supposedly, could exist on either, but under
different conditions of gravity, light, heat, atmosphere--everything.
"So it is here.
"But one thing is not changed men, one of the most important things.
I've still got an appetite, so let's eat!"
With a laugh of relief, they agreed with him on that, and started
below. Two of the men set to work in the galley, preparing the meal,
while Warren and Putney stayed in the control room, observing the
meters.
A Puzzled Group of Space Travelers
"We've got gravity, we've got power, and light and heat, and evidently
our force-screen is working, for there's atmospheric pressure outside,
earth-atmosphere brought with us. But what in--in the Universe did
this?" demanded Putney.
"Conflicting force-fields, Putt, the conflicting fields of that little
release-flame running wild, and our own field X-785. It threw us for a
loss, Putt, but I think it killed that release-flame.
"Now we've got to work fast, and locate ourselves. First and foremost,
we'll have to use the telescope and take star-charts, so that we can
come back to this point if we move, and by all the gods we _will_! I
couldn't have done this in a billion years, and no man will ever do
it again, in all probability, so let's make hay while the sun shines.
Either we can return, or we can't. If we can, we don't have to worry,
and if we can't, we might as well enjoy life while we live!"
"I guess you're right, Ran, but what will we have to do to learn about
our position?"
"Determine the Constants of Space here. There are certain constants
that are, I suspect, universal. The constant of gravity, the
proportionality factor you know, will probably be the same, but we
can determine that. But such fundamental constants as the velocity
of light, radius of space curvature, the space equation of time and
the resistance or rigidity of space-constants, we will have to know.
Evidently our release-flame burns steadily, though Mac said it was
orange here--I'm not surprised--so we will have time to work. But most
important for us, is the rate of progress of time as relative to our
own space-time sphere."
"A second here may be a million years of earth-time you mean?"
"Exactly--and if it is, we are forever isolated. By this time, or by
the time we return, the sun and its attendant planets will have swung
around the galaxy and been lost from us forever in a maze of five
hundred thousand million suns, and the galaxy itself may have swung
into some other part of our super-galaxy, the Magellanic cloud for
instance----"
"Yes, and a much simpler way of being gloomy is to merely say we might
all commit suicide. Let's go below," said Putney.