So I stepped his way and we went weaving through the clock-works to a
desk at one side of the room. There were half a dozen chairs behind it
and he seated me alongside himself. The flat top of the desk was banked
with small tabs and push buttons so that it looked like a stenotype.
He pressed one stud and the room darkened. He pressed another and the
_bam-bam_ quickened until it was a steady hum. The octahedron crystal
whirled so quickly that it became a shadowy mist of light under the
projectors.
"I suppose you know," the old coot said in rather self-conscious tones,
"that this is the first time we've been able to push our definitive
analysis to the ultimate future. We'd never have done it if Wiggons
hadn't developed his self-checking data system."
I said: "Good for Wiggons," and I was more confused than ever. I tell
you, boys, it felt like waking up from a dream you couldn't quite
remember. You know that peculiar sensation of having everything at the
edge of your mind so to speak and not being able to get hold of it--I
had a thousand clues and inferences jangling around in my head and none
of them would interlock. But I knew this was big stuff.
Shadows began to play across the crystal. Off-focus images and flashes
of color. The little old guy murmured to himself and his fingers
plucked at the keyboard in a quick fugue of motion. Finally he said:
"Ah!" and sat back to watch the crystal. So did I.
* * * * *
I was looking through a window in space, and beyond that window I saw
a single bright star in the blackness. It was sharp and cold and so
brilliant it hurt your eyes. Just beyond the window, in the foreground,
I saw a spaceship. No, none of your cigar things or ovate spheroids or
any of that. It was a spaceship that seemed to have been built mostly
in after-thoughts. A great rambling affair with added wings and towers
and helter-skelter ports. It looked like it'd been built just to hang
there in one place.
The old coot said: "Watch close now, Mr. Muggins, things happen rather
quickly at this tempo."
Quickly? They practically sprinted. There was a spurt of activity
around the spaceship. Towers went up and came down; the buglike figures
of people in space armor bustled about; a little cruiser, shaped like
a fat needle, sped up to it, hung around a while and then sped away.
There was a tense second of waiting and then the star blotted out. In
another moment the spaceship was blotted out, too. The crystal was
black.
My friend, the goofy professor, touched a couple of studs and we had
a long view. There were clusters of stars spread before me, sharply,
brilliantly in focus. As I watched, the upper side of the crystal began
to blacken. In a few swift moments the stars were blacked out. Just
like that. Blooey! It reminded me of school when we added carbon ink to
a drop under the mike just to see how the amoebae would take it.
He punched the buttons like crazy and we had more and more views
of the Universe, and always that black cloud crept along, blotting
everything out. After a while he couldn't find any more stars. There
was nothing but blackness. It seemed to me that it wasn't more than an
extra-special Stereo Show, but it chilled me nevertheless. I started
thinking about those amoebae and feeling sorry for them.
The lights went on and I was back inside the clock again. He turned to
me and said: "Well, what do you think?"