_Feature Novel by
GEORGE O. SMITH_
_Les Ackerman, unbelievably alive after a nuclear
explosion, finds himself sought after by the denizens
of three possible worlds, all contending that Ackerman
alone can adjust the incredible situation he has
created. Only Les doesn't know what he's done!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Future combined with Science Fiction Stories November 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
To the present sitting, there were three hundred thousand words in the
report on the new transuranic element that Les Ackerman was studying.
This took months of painstaking work, but Ackerman viewed his results
with satisfaction. To date, the report covered about all that was to
be known regarding the physical and chemical properties of this new
element; there remained only the nuclear properties to investigate.
Nuclear properties were always left to last. Nuclear bombardment
defiled the element and rendered it unsuitable for the undestructive
chemical analysis and physical investigations.
So Les Ackerman closed his notebook with a slam and checked the
refrigerator. The deuterium-ice--frozen heavy water--for the cyclotron
target was in fine shape. He could start at once.
He took both the ice-target and the sample to the big, enclosed room
and inserted them in the proper places in the cyclotron set-up. Then
he fired up the big cyclotron, and high-energy deuterons bombarded the
deuterium-ice target, releasing free neutrons that in turn bombarded
the sample.
That was to be his last job for the night; the registering counters
would record the radioactivity while he slept, and in the morning
the sample would probably be 'cold' enough to handle. He consulted
his prospectus in the notebook and checked the bombardment-time for
this first nuclear test. One half hour. At the end of one half hour,
Ackerman could turn off the cyc and go to bed. The automatic counters
would quietly record the diminishing activity of the 'hot' sample.
The click of the counting-rate meter sounded. The first atoms of the
sample were being attacked properly. Ackerman nodded to himself, there
in the operating chamber, separated from the real activity by solid
yards of concrete, water, and paraffin.
Unluckily, Ackerman could not be in the cyc chamber itself to watch. As
it was, it would have been no more dangerous for Les to stand in the
radioactivity-laden cyclotron room than it was for him here in what all
cyclotron mechanics considered more than safe from harm.
As the neutrons raced invisibly into the new element, a tiny,
glistening sphere expanded, millimeter by millimeter. It was a strange
field of energy, a true freak of Nature. Unpredicted and unknown, it
hovered at nine centimeters radius as the sample swallowed neutrons by
the uncounted million. It expanded again, slowly, slowly, slowly until
the critical proportion of sample and transmuted nuclei was attained.
Then the glistening sphere of energy expanded with an acceleration
that drove it to the ends of the infinite universe in a matter of
microseconds. Too swift to be seen, to register--if there had been a
means of detecting it--and too swift even to leave a trace of evidence
on the physical universe.
* * * * *
Its effect, however, was evident to Ackerman. The others who came later
saw only what they found remaining. Les was on the spot, and saw the
dual effect of the bombardment of Element X by neutrons.
His notebook gave the first sight of unreality. Like a double
exposure, or a photomontage, he saw page after page curl up in
charred destruction--curling up wraithlike out of a complete
and unharmed volume! He saw the solid concrete blocks rave into
incandescence--flying in terrible fury out of the unharmed wall; each
brick as it exploded separating ghostlike from its unharmed twin.
The laboratory exploded in a mighty pillar of flame and fire--rising
seventy thousand feet into the sky but mushrooming upward from the
placidly unharmed ghostly replica of itself. The light from the
explosion was all-blinding, yet the calm moonlight still cast its
mellow shadow over the unharmed buildings. The explosion shocked fleecy
clouds into falling rain--rain that fell from the serenely existing sky
of the other--other--other what?
Ackerman found himself standing on the sterile land that surrounded the
laboratory, simultaneously watching the boiling cloud above and the
moonlit laboratory below. He was puzzled, somewhat afraid to go close
to the possible effect of the nuclear explosion; yet there was the fact
that at least in one existance the laboratory was unharmed.
He waited, wondering. The passage of time did not seem to bother him.
Previously, Ackerman had been tired, and more than glad that this was
the last job of the evening. Now he was far from weary, and the passage
of time was difficult to estimate.
He was surprised to see, not too much later, that people were
streaming towards the scene. He laughed at one group--a racing column
of excellent fire-fighting equipment; the idea of tossing water or
chemicals on a radioactive explosion was amusing in a sense. The fire
had gone out a microsecond or so after it had started, and if anything
were burning now, it was because the stuff had not time to cool down
yet. Ackerman could think of nothing more dangerous, however, than to
drive a fire truck--or anything else not shielded in lead, water, and
concrete--across the scorched area.
He saw his colleagues walking wraithlike and arguing heatedly against
the police and firemen. The latter wanted to go in; Ackerman's former
mates were waving counters and personal ionization meters at them,
trying to explain the danger. The officials were inclined to be
skeptical of any danger that could not be seen, but were equally awed
by the names of the men who barred their way. At long last a crude
circle was drawn on the ground; as the curious folk continued to
arrive, the circle was quickly filled and people were standing with
their toes across the line.
* * * * *
Ackerman found one of his friends near him. "Crowley!" he called.
Tom Crowley did not hear; he continued to argue with another fellow
about Ackerman.
"No," said Ackerman, "I'm here--not up in that cloud!"
"Poor Les," said Tom. "I wonder what happened."
Ed Waters shrugged sorrowfully. "I can't imagine; there was certainly
nothing dangerous in what Les was intending to do."
"And we know Les," replied Tom. "He'd not take to doing something off
the beam."
"There was certainly nothing off the beam about bombarding Element X
with neutrons," agreed Ed Waters. "We've done it before."
"But not with as large a sample. We'll have to be careful in the future
about it."
Waters grinned wolfishly. "We'll not toss another cyclotron to the
breeze," he said. "We can get a neutron-emitting radioisotope from one
of the uranium piles and shove the two together by remote control;
it'll save both lives and materiel."
"Too damned bad," said Crowley. "We lost a good man."
"But I'm right here!" exploded Ackerman. He had been standing between
them, waving his hands in their faces--and in more than one case
_through_ their faces. Strangely enough, the trees and the ground were
quite solid to Les Ackerman, but his friends were not.
The crowds of the curious came and they went; newspapers, as the hours
went on, told Ackerman that he was the victim of a terrible atomic
blast, a totally deplorable situation.
Ackerman wondered more about it. Was this death?
* * * * *
It was many hours later, when daylight had come fully and the morning's
work was to begin, that Les Ackerman got his next shock. The sterile
area was still guarded by Ackerman's friends, making close watch with
counters and ionization meters. Yet so far as Les was concerned, the
shallow depression of greenish glaze fell in a concave bowl below the
surface of a serene and untouched terrain upon which the wraithlike
laboratory stood. He termed it "wraithlike" because he could see both
the greenish depression and the laboratory, and the other side of
the blast-bowl through the laboratory. He could not see through the
laboratory to glimpse any of its insides.
Whatever this division was, Ackerman could see a dual possibility,
could see either the world of the explosion or he could see the world
of peace and quiet.
His shock came as the technicians began to arrive. Then, he blinked.
As he was standing beside Ed Waters, he saw Waters' car drive up to
the parking place beside the laboratory, saw Ed emerge and enter the
building by the main door!
Before he could follow Waters, he saw Tom Crowley enter, too; Ackerman
left their counterparts on the edge of the seared area and raced
forward with a shout of alarm.
It occurred to him, then, that both men carried personal counters and
warning gauges; they would have been warned away from the area if there
were any radioactive danger. Ackerman found his hand passing through
the door-handle and puzzled over how to get in until he understood
that if his hand could pass through the door-handle, he himself might
pass through the door. He did, and with some dismay knew that he was
walking, not upon the floor of the building but about a foot or so
below the floor. With an effort of his will alone Les raised himself;
it was disconcerting to know that he was wading knee deep through a
solid concrete floor.
He found Waters and Crowley in the cyclotron room. They were looking
over the sample critically with heavy magnifiers and making notes.
"Thought Les was going to flop here," said Waters.
"So did I. He must have decided to go home after he was finished."
"Don't blame him. I'd have been inclined to set the timers and leave
then. Ackerman is a cautious fellow and would wait until the timers
clicked off even though he had nothing to do but sit and watch unerring
meters. I'd say that Les deserved a good night's sleep. Well, take a
hunk off of the sample for the radioisotopists, and we'll carve a bit
ourselves for later, then give the remaining piece another banging."
"You carve," said Crowley. "I'll get another heavy-ice target from the
refrigerator."
Waters nodded, cut two infinitesimal slices from the sample with
a diamond-edged wheel, dropped them into separate containers and
labelled them both. Then he re-inserted the sample in the cyclotron
set-up and both men went out to give the Element X sample a second
shot--according to plan, a longer and more energetic blast.
Vainly Les Ackerman tried to reach them.
He screamed himself hoarse, trying to tell them not to do it--that
he had been a one-time victim. Then, in fear and desperation, he
saw them leave the cyclotron chamber; he fought and swore against
his wraithlike fingers that passed through the sample of death. He
clawed ineffectively at it, trying to take it from the coming blast
of neutrons. Like the room, the walls, and the men, his hands passed
through the cyclotron; through the sample; and through the containing
shell. Instinctively he knew that the cyclotron was being fired up,
yet his fumbling hands felt nothing of the fifty thousand volt driving
power of the Dee plates. He knew instinctively when the storm of
the deuterons came to bombard the heavy-water ice. He knew that the
resulting neutrons were entering the sample of Element X.
He fumed and fretted; then as his mind cried out in vain, his will
slipped and Les Ackerman went down through the floor of the room, he
could not reach up high enough even to touch the imminent danger.
He turned and ran, almost crying in frustration.
Near the seared edge of last night's explosion, Ackerman turned to
watch. An hour passed--Two--Three.
Whatever had happened before, it was not to happen again. Not this
time, at least.
For when Les returned, Waters and Crowley were watching the brief
half-lives die out on the counters and making histograms in an effort
to predict the safety-time.
* * * * *
Mystified, tired of wondering, and utterly lonesome, Les Ackerman
waited in the no-world life between two direct possibilities of man's
existance.
It was meaningless to Ackerman; perhaps it was meaningless to Nature
herself.
The complete incongruity of it all--and the conflicting evidences
were beyond him. Trees and rock and ground were one; the building was
there and so was that sere bowl of greenish glaze. At nightfall, his
friends entered their cars by the laboratory and drove right through
the still-crowding people of the other existance. Waters passed
almost through his alter ego, and might have seen his friend Crowley
twice--excepting that Waters, unlike Les Ackerman, could not see both
coincident pathways of event.
2
Weary, utterly lonesome, and completely baffled about it all, Les
Ackerman finally slept. On the hard ground he slept, loath to leave the
scene.
He was awakened by the sound of a voice speaking his name. Shaking his
head, Les sat up, saw that it was just about sunrise, and answered
instinctively, though he knew that his voice could not be heard. He
could hear people--but people could not hear him; just as he could see
people but they could not see him.
"I'm right here," he said for, perhaps, the ten-thousandth time. He
expected, for the ten-thousandth time, that he would not be heard.
"Good," replied the voice.
Then in the growing light, Ackerman saw a glistening, egg-shaped
vehicle coming slowly through the grove of trees. It hovered above him
and settled easily to the ground.
The voice, he saw, came from a woman who was obviously driving the
thing. There was a small hemisphere of glass thrown back from the 'top'
of the vehicle, and the woman was head and shoulders above the level of
the hull.
She smiled, and Ackerman was instantly attracted. "Well," she said with
an air of successful finality. "You've arrived."
Ackerman shrugged. So far as he was concerned, the girl could get out
of the vehicle and make passes at him; he was still as isolated from
all people as a butterfly in a glass case at some moldy museum.
"Have I?" he answered, still skeptical.
"You have." She ducked her head down into the vehicle and re-appeared,
coming out of a door in the side. He was a little surprised at her
clothing. He expected something bizarre; at least she might have been
dressed in something in keeping with the completely exotic vehicle she
was driving.
But she was dressed in a simple frock of silk or nylon. Tasteful,
modern. She was auburn-haired and very attractive according to Les
Ackerman's fastidious standards.
"I'm Tansie Lee," she said, offering a slender hand. He took it and
found it firm and warm.
"I'm Les Ack--"
"I know; after all, I've come a long way to find you."
"Me?" asked Ackerman in complete wonder.
"You don't really know what happened?" Her tone was teasing, and she
was obviously enjoying every moment of it.
"No, not really," he said. "All I know is that I was bombarding Element
X with neutrons and then--well, it's rather hard to describe. I can
lean against a tree, but I can also walk through the laboratory door.
That doesn't make sense."
"Yes it does when you're properly introduced to your environment.
Look, Les, you are in the middle, lost territory between two branching
streams of events. In one branch, you were the victim of an explosion;
in the other, your efforts were successful in the lab.
"Now," she said, groping for the right words so that her explanation
would be simple, "a tree might be in both worlds; therefore you can
lean against it. If a woodcutter in one branch of events cuts the
tree down, then you could walk through it in the other branch. The
laboratory is there in one branch only; the green bowl of atomic
explosion is there in the other. Follow?"
Ackerman let that digest for a moment and then said: "What would
happen if I tried to break off a tree branch myself?"
She laughed. "You'd find--and you'll find--that things consist only of
Aristotelian extremes. Either they are non-coincident and therefore
very intangible, or you'll find that they are coincident and as
untouchable as tungsten carbide to the bare hands. You can walk through
non-coincident granite but you couldn't make a dent in coincident
tissue paper."
"Then how do my life processes continue? Either I must be breathing
coincident--and therefore untouchable and unchangeable air--or I must
be breathing non-coincident and therefore untouchable and unchangeable
air."
She laughed heartily. "Trouble is, Les Ackerman, you don't really
exist; therefore your life processes are unreal."
"Oh--I don't exist, hey? Then what is this that is I?"
"I'll skip the metaphysics," she said with a laugh. "Do you doubt the
reality of unreal things?"
"Isn't that a disclaimer in itself?"
* * * * *
She shook her head. "The square root of minus one is an unreal number.
It is a pure formulation, and yet it is an important factor. You cannot
dig too deeply into any phase of science without using it--and yet it
is still an imaginary quantity. It does not truly exist, nor do you.
Yet it is there as a formulation, and that is what you--and I should
add: I--are, or am, or whichever."
He laughed too, at her confusion. "We are," he said, but it was more of
a question than a correction of her grammar.
"We are--and there are and will be others, too."
"But I do not understand it at all."
"It is not to be easily understood," said Tansie. "Not without help.
I'll help, if you want."
"I'd be happy to know what the answer is," said Les. "Just how do you
propose to help?"
"My machine. Take a ride?"