* * * * *
Dr. Weatherby was staring off at the stars moodily, with a look so far
away I could have fancied he was gazing, not at the stars, but beyond
them. And then he tore himself back, and smiled, lighting a cigarro,
flipping the torch at me and asking me to step on it.
“I have so much to tell you,” he said. “I hardly know how or where to
begin. You know, of course, something of my life, my work.
“Leonard, and you, Jim, I believe you’re familiar in a general way with
what the physicists think of the atom? Radiant matter—these
electro-rays that seem to solve everything and yet only add to the
mystery?
“You know that savants would tell us that space is curved; so Einstein
told us years ago? Well, _I_ will tell you this. To-morrow, after you
have slept, I believe I can make clear to you the real construction of
our material universe.”
His hand checked us. “I have been working since 1970 along these lines.
Alice recently has been helping me. And then Dolores—
“This child here, in the dark, it has been given her to see things
denied to our science. Years and years ago a scientist proclaimed that
_thoughts_ themselves are a mere vibration, like light and heat and
sound, and all these mysterious rays and flying electrons—electricity
itself. They are all the same, though we name them differently.”
He had been talking swiftly, but quietly. “Tell them, Dolores.”
“A big open space,” she said slowly. “Mountains and a broad valley. A
cliffside. People there on a ledge. A young man and a young woman, very
white and pale, with blood on the man’s face. They were standing on a
height, with a dark cavern behind them.
“Other people, or monsters down in the valley: something vague but
horrible as a nightmare with a nameless horror. And the man was calling,
_Help_. Not the word. I could not hear that, but I knew. Calling to me.
He keeps on calling. I can hear him so often. Calling to _me_!”
She said it so strangely. At once it seemed uncanny, weird, almost
gruesome. A thrill very akin to fear ran over me. This was not science.
But Dr. Weatherby’s calm, precise voice was scientific enough.
“That was several years ago. We have found since that she is receiving
thought-vibrations, not from here on earth, not from the planets, or the
stars, but from beyond the stars. The greater realms out there,
suspected to exist for so long, which now I know and can prove to
exist!”
His voice had risen in an excitement, an exaltation. He went on more
swiftly, “But all that is nothing. I wanted you to come here and help
me. Dolores has had thoughts from out there beyond the stars . . . and
her own answering thoughts have been answered. Communication!
“Oh, I have guarded against delusion! I have sent messages through
Dolores of scientific import, and been answered with scientific thoughts
all beyond this child’s comprehension. Communications with the great
unknown—the infinity of distance unfathomable.
“That started a year ago. Now I have done more. I have learned how to
get there. I can transport myself, my girls and you! I am ready to make
the journey now. That is why I want you, and need you. We are going. We
want you to come with us, out beyond the stars!”
II
THE DEAD WHITE THING
“In the plan of the universe,” said Dr. Weatherby, “we find a conception
gigantic, infinite, and yet it all has a simplicity. I want most
earnestly to have you understand me, Leonard and Jim.”
He gazed at us with a gentle smile. We had had our morning meal, and had
slept long and heavily, and now it was evening twilight. We sat in the
big livingroom on the lower floor of the Weatherby home. Dolores, as
before, cuddled against her grandfather’s side. Alice busied about the
house, but presently she joined us. Dr. Weatherby’s manner was as
earnest as his words. He added, looking at me, “I want to be very clear,
Leonard. This thing that we are to do—this journey, in which if you
will not join me I shall make alone—”
“By the infernal, you won’t make it alone while I’m alive,” Jim cried.
“The detective service loses its best tracker, beginning right away!”
Dr. Weatherby held out his hand. “My boy!” He could say no more. And on
Dolores’ face was a radiance. Then Dr. Weatherby turned to me.
“And you, Leonard—will you go?”
The direct question startled me.
Would I go out there into eternity? Beyond the stars, into eternal time,
and over space unfathomable, to encounter what now no human mind could
grasp? But, like Jim, I was practically alone in the world and I was
free to make any decision without fear of hurting others.
Nevertheless, to give up my commission, as youngest commander of the
great 40 N, to disappear, lose all I had earned, gave me pause. To
return, perhaps never. Wanderers beyond the stars! Was this not,
perhaps, too bold a thing for human endeavor?
I heard my voice saying quietly, “Why, of course I’m going with you, Dr.
Weatherby.”
I was aware that Alice had come in to sit beside me, her cool white hand
impulsively pressing mine. And Dolores was saying,
“Alice, they’re going! Isn’t that wonderful? We’re all going, just as
soon as we can get ready!”
* * * * *
“A strange simplicity,” Dr. Weatherby was saying. “First, let me make
this clear: when I say universe—the construction of our universe—I
mean everything that exists, or has, or will exist, the smallest entity
of our infinitesimal atomic world to the greatest conception of what may
lie beyond the stars. Does that sound complicated? Let me say again, it
is simple.”
He leaned toward us, with his thick, strong hands gripped in his lap. “I
want you to realize first that we are dealing with infinities. The human
mind is so finite, so limited. You must cast off most of your
instinctive methods of reasoning. You understand me?”
“We’ll try,” I said.
He nodded and went on.
“Conceive a void of nothingness. No space, no time, no material bodies.
Just nothing. That was the beginning. Do not try to wonder _when_ it
was. A billion years ago . . . a billion billion. Not at all. You must
not think of when, because _when_ implies time. There was no _time_.
There could be no time without material bodies to create movement and
events. For time in itself is nothing but the measurement between
events.
“We have then, a nothingness. A vortex. A whirlpool.”
“A vortex of nothingness?” I exclaimed.
“Exactly. Why, back in the 1920’s, Leonard, scientists recognized that
the basic entities of matter were only whirlpools. They hoped then to
find some fundamental substance, like ether. But there is none.
“A whirlpool, by its very motion, simulates substance. And, in the last
analysis, that is all which exists—an apparent solidity. Divide
anything, probe into anything, you find only a _motion_ of something
else smaller which is apparently real. But then take that smaller thing.
Divide it. You find more empty spaces, more nothingness. And other yet
smaller things in violent motion.
“Why, Leonard, don’t you realize that’s what puzzled scientists? From
1900 on, they puzzled over it. They found a solid bar of iron to be
composed of molecules. They said: ‘Oh yes, we understand. This solidity
of iron is only apparent. It really consists of molecules of iron with
empty spaces in between them, and the molecules are in motion.’
“But then, Leonard—this was way back—they suddenly found that the
reality of the molecule was only apparent. It was just like the iron!
Empty spaces, with atoms in motion. Ah, at last they had got to the
bottom of it. Atoms.
“But then they found that an atom was no more a solidity than the
molecule, or the iron bar. Still other spaces, with other vibrating
particles. And fatuously they said: ‘We have found electrons, revolving
around a central nucleus.’ But that meant nothing, and at last they
began to realize it.
“Let your mind leap beyond all that, Leonard. It is too fatuous to think
that each division of matter is the last, simply because you cannot make
another division. Let’s go back to that original vortex of nothingness.
It created an apparent solidity, exactly as the vibrating molecules of
iron create iron. That’s clear, isn’t it?”
“But,” said Jim, “how small is this smallest vortex?”
Dr. Weatherby laughed. “It has no size. It is infinitely small. An
abstract quality, beyond human conception. If you try to name its size,
then no longer is it infinitely small. It is not the smallest vortex;
there is no such thing. It is the infinitely small vortex, which is very
different.
“Conceive, then, this vortex, which creates an apparently solid particle
of matter. I call this particle an intime. This intime, in turn, with
myriads of its fellows clustering about it, vibrating with empty
nothingness between, creates another, larger entity—another apparently
solid substance. And so on up to what we now call an electron.”
“Well,” I said, “between the intime and the electron, how many separate
densities might there be?”
“An infinite number,” he replied smilingly. “A number that cannot be
conceived. Each has distinct characteristics, just as iron differs from
lead or gold.”
He paused a moment, but none of us said anything. “With this
conception,” he went on, “we can build the definition that a material
substance is a density of other substances. It maintains its separate
existence by virtue of having around its exterior an emptiness greater
than the emptiness of its interior. Think of that a moment.
“The earth itself is such a density. The space around it is greater than
any of the spaces within its molecules, its atoms, its electrons—down
to its finitely small intimes—to the ultimate nothingness of which it
is composed.
“That is our earth. It is in movement. And another density near it we
call Venus, and another Mars, vibrating with a space between them. All
our starry universe; you see, Leonard?”
My mind leaped with the thrill of it. The great vault of the heavens
with its myriad whirling stars shrank before my far-flung imagination
into a tiny space teeming with its agitated particles!
Dr. Weatherby added gently, “A fragment of iron is microscopically no
different in structure from our starry universe. The distances between
our heavenly bodies compared to the size of them are quite the same as
the distances between electrons, or intimes, compared to their size. You
get my point?”
“I do,” Jim exclaimed. “What we call the sky would seem a solid mass of
matter—like a fragment of iron—to some greater viewpoint?”
“Exactly. Our microscopes show nothing which is actually more solid than
the sky itself. From here, on earth, to the Milky Way is to us a
tremendous distance. But suppose that we were so gigantic—so vast in
comparative size—that we needed a powerful microscope even to perceive
that space. What would we see? A multiplicity of vibrating particles!
And without the microscope the whole space would seem solid. We could
call it . . . well, say a grain of gold.”
For a moment we were silent. There was to all this an awesome aspect.
Yet its actual simplicity was overwhelming.
Dolores said timidly, “It seems strange that so simple a thing should
have been unknown for so long.”
“Not at all,” said Dr. Weatherby. “The knowledge came step by step. It
is only the final conception which seems so startling. To me it is the
logical, inevitable conclusion. How could the facts be otherwise?
“Always, therefore, we have conceived ourselves and our earth to be some
masterful dividing line between what is smaller and what is larger than
ourselves. That is fatuous.
“We call the one our microscopic world. The other our astronomical
world. And we sit between them, puzzling over their difference! They are
both one, and we are in them—a mere step of the ladder.”
“It makes me feel very small,” said Alice.
“Or large,” I said. “According to the viewpoint.”
I added to Dr. Weatherby, “I realize now why no size, no motion, no
time, nor density can be absolute. Everything must be relative to
something else.”
“Exactly,” he nodded.
Jim was puzzling. “This voyage we’re going to make—beyond the stars.
How are we going to make this trip? What in? By what method? By the nine
airy demons, Dr. Weatherby, there’s an awful lot you haven’t told us
yet!”
“Not so much,” said Dr. Weatherby smilingly.
“Because,” I interposed, “you don’t need to know very much, Jim.”
“We’re going in a projectile,” said Dolores. “At least they say it looks
like a projectile.”
“Like Mallen’s moon rocket of 1989,” Tim exclaimed.
Dr. Weatherby shook his head. “The various anti-gravity methods devised
so far would help us very little, except Elton’s electronic
neutralization of gravity. I use that principle merely in starting the
flight. A trip to the moon, such as Mallen’s rocket made, had nothing in
common with this journey of ours.”
“They say Mallen is going himself next year—to Mars,” Alice remarked.
“Let’s see our projectile,” Jim demanded.
“In a moment,” Dr. Weatherby said. “There is, first, one conception I
want to make sure you have grasped. Forget our earth now. Forget
yourself. Conceive the material universe to be a vast void in which
various densities are whirling.
“From the infinitely small to the infinitely large, they are of every
size and character. Yet all are inherently the same, merely apparently
solid. I will ask you, Leonard, this space between the earth and
Mars—of what would you say it is composed?”