“No!” he exclaimed warmly. “There is where you fail to grasp my
fundamental conception. The void of space itself is a mass of particles,
a mass of densities, of every possible size and character.
“The earth is one; a wandering asteroid is another. And meteors,
meteorites, down to the smallest particles of dust. And still smaller,
are the particles of light, far flung everywhere through space. Other
entities are again still smaller—call them intimes—down in size to
infinity.
“Space then, you must realize, is not empty. The emptiness, the
nothingness, is only the infinitely small. Ah, I see now that you begin
to understand!”
I said slowly, “I’m imagining space as . . . as a jelly. Unsolid,
because we ourselves are more solid, and it seems unsolid to us. But
. . . if we were less dense, and larger . . . gigantic—” I stopped.
“That,” said Dr. Weatherby, “is precisely the point of view I’ve wanted
you to get. You can understand now why to beings of some greater outside
realm all our interstellar space would shrink into apparent solidity,
and they would call it an atom.
* * * * *
“Conceive yourself now a scientist of that vast universe outside. You
are living on a density—a great conglomeration of particles clinging
together—and you call it your earth.
“One tiny particle of your earth is beneath your microscope. You call
that particle a grain of gold. You examine it. You find it is not solid.
You see ‘empty spaces.’ They are not really empty, but the particles of
matter swimming in them are too small for you to see. But you do see
what you call molecules of gold.
“You increase the power of your microscope. You examine just one
molecule of this gold. Now you see more supposedly empty spaces, with
smaller whirling entities which you choose to call atoms.
“You examine one atom. The same result and you call the still smaller
particles electrons. Down and down—who can say how far? Until, at last,
you are looking into one intime. You see yet smaller particles whirling
in space. That is the space between our stars!
“And these whirling points of light—perhaps you can distinguish no more
than a million of them. They are the million largest, brightest of our
stars. You cannot see our own sun; it is too small. Or our earth—too
small. And too dark.
“But if you did see our earth, and were a fatuous scientist, you might
say, ‘Ah, at last I have seen the _smallest thing_!’ Which is amusing,
because our earth has a good many rocks composing it. And each rock goes
down to pebbles, grains of sand, molecules, atoms, electrons—to
infinity.
“Do you get the conception now? This whole universe we see and feel from
here on earth, from a greater viewpoint would all shrink into a tiny,
apparently solid particle.”
“I can visualize it,” I said. “It’s stupendous.”
But Jim interposed, “This trip we are to make—”
Alice interrupted him, explaining, “Grandfather has been making tests.
We have several models; he saved one of them to show you. We can see it
now?” She looked inquiringly at her grandfather.
Dr. Weatherby rose to his feet. “We’ll try it now. I’ll show you the
model and we’ll send it . . . away.
“Come,” he added. “When you see it start, you will understand.”
We left the house. Night had closed down, a soft, cloudless night. Never
had I seen the stars so brilliant.
Dr. Weatherby led us up a path, beneath spreading trees, past gardens of
flowers, past his lake with its pool and a cascading brook for its
outlet down the hillside to the Hudson; past the shadowy landing stage
where high overhead my plane lay moored; up the slope of a hill to a
long, narrow outbuilding.
Jim and I had noticed this building when we landed at dawn. It was new
to us, erected during the year or so since we had last been here.
“My workshop,” Dr. Weatherby said as we approached it.
* * * * *
I gazed at it curiously. It was a single-story building, without
windows, flat-roofed and no more than twenty feet high. In width,
possibly thirty feet, but it was at least five times that long.
It lay crosswise on the hill. At a glance I could not guess of what
materials it might be constructed. Wood, stone, metal—it seemed none of
these. Its aspect was whitish, not silvery, or milky; rather was it a
dead flesh white, with a faintly lurid cast of green to it.
In the starlight it lay silent and unlighted. But there seemed to it a
glow, as though it were bathed in moonlight. And then I saw that the
glow was inherent in it, almost a phosphorescence. Abruptly I felt that
there was something uncanny, unnatural about this structure.
I made no comment. But I saw surprise on Jim’s face, and at the lower
end of the building where there appeared to be a door, he stopped,
irresolute.
“Is . . . is the projectile in here?”
“Yes,” said Alice. “Inside. But we’re going to the test room first,
aren’t we, Grandfather?”
We went through a door and along a narrow passage. It was dimly
illumined by small blue vacuum tubes overhead. I found myself with
Dolores.
“It’s very wonderful,” she said. “You will see, very soon. Oh, yes,
where is Jim? I want Jim to see it.”
“You’re not afraid, Dolores? Afraid of this voyage they talk about?”
“Afraid? Oh, no!”
The passageway widened. “Here is Jim,” I said. “Jim, stay with Dolores.
She wants to show you this . . . this thing we’ve come to see.”
We entered a room some thirty feet square. Dr. Weatherby switched on the
lights. There were furniture, rugs, small tables of apparatus,
instruments, and banks of vacuum tubes on tripods standing about, with
wires in insulated cables connecting them. The cables littered the
floor, like huge snakes.
Dr. Weatherby drew aside a portiere which cut off a corner of the room.
Lying on a large table, flooded with a vacuum light from above, was a
model of this building we were in. It was about two feet wide, by ten
feet long—the same dead white, uncanny-looking structure. A thought
sprang to my mind. Was this building we were in itself the projectile? I
think I murmured the question, for Dr. Weatherby smiled.
“No. Here is a small replica of the vehicle.”
He unbolted the roof of the model. Resting inside was a tiny, dead white
object some six inches long, cigarro-shaped, but with a pointed end and
blunt stern. It rather suggested the ancient sub-sea vessels.
It had fin-shaped projections, like very small wings for its slow
transit through air. A tiny tower was forward, on top, and there were
bull’s-eye windows lining the sides and in every face of the octagon
tower.
Dr. Weatherby pointed out all these details to us, speaking in his low,
earnest voice. “I’m wondering, Leonard, and you, Jim, if you’re familiar
with Elton’s principle of the neutralization of gravity?”
“No,” I said, and Jim shook his head. “Not in detail.”
In 1988 Elton perfected it. I knew of it only as an electronic stream of
radiant matter which when directed against a solid substance,
destroyed—or partially destroyed—the attraction of that other
substance for the earth.
“I’ll explain it when we get in the vehicle itself,” Dr. Weatherby said.
He was connecting wires to the little model building on the table; and
he closed its roof, and opened a wide doorway at its end. “I am going to
charge this small building with the Elton current. The electronic stream
will carry that tiny projectile with it.
“This will be the same as the start of our own voyage, Leonard, except
that with this model, I have intensified the rapidity of the successive
changes. What happens here in minutes, will take us hours. Sit down over
there, all of you.”
* * * * *
We ranged ourselves in the gloom across the room. The model of the
building, with its end doorway open like an airplane hangar, was
pointing past us. Jim and I sat together, with Alice near me, and
Dolores by Jim. He put his arm around her.
A moment, and then Dr. Weatherby touched a switch. The room was plunged
into darkness. From the table came a low electrical hum.
I strained my eyes. A glow was over there. It brightened. The little
building on the table was glowing with a faint, blue-white light. A
minute passed, or it might have been ten minutes. I do not know.
The hum of the Elton current intensified; a whir, then a faint, very
tiny screaming throb. The building was now outlined completely: a
luminous white, shot through with a cast of green, and red and yellow
sparks snapping about it. From where I sat I could see partially into
its opened doorway, as the interior was not dark. It was glowing inside,
and now I became aware of a very faint red stream, like light, pouring
from the doorway, crossing the room, spreading like a fan.
It was the Elton ray, escaping its bonds, its tiny particles plunging
outward with the speed of light, or more. The red glow struck the blank,
dead white wall of our room, stained the wall with its red sheen. Sparks
were snapping in the air around me. To my nostrils came a faint,
sulphurous smell. My skin was prickling.
“Look,” whispered Alice.
The opposite wall where the red ray was striking, now seemed glowing of
itself, a blank, opaque wall, stained red by the billions of
imponderable particles bombarding it.
But it was no longer an opaque wall. Of itself it was now glowing,
becoming translucent, transparent! The stars! Through the wall I could
see the placid night outside, the dark hillside, the stars!
I felt Alice’s hand gripping my arm. From the glowing model on the
table, the tiny vehicle was issuing. The dead white thing. It came very
slowly, floating out the doorway, as though drawn by the red diverging
stream of light.
Slowly it passed me, ascending a trifle, no longer dead white, for it
was transfigured—alive now, shimmering, its outlines wavy, unreal. It
moved a trifle faster, came to the wall of the room, passed through it.
“Watch,” breathed Alice.
The vehicle—that tiny oblong shape smaller than my hand—was outside
over the treetops, plunging onward in the red stream of light. Yet at
that distance I could see it plainly, its image as large as when it was
a few feet from my face.
And suddenly I realized I was staring after a thing gigantic. It showed
now far over the hilltop. I could have sworn it was but some great air
liner. A patch of stars was blotted out behind it.
Another moment; the silver thing off there was far away. Was it as far
as the moon? It was larger now than the moon would have seemed, hanging
out there!
I watched. I could still see it as plainly as when it started. But then
suddenly came a change. Its image became fainter, thinner, and rapidly
expanding. There was a faint image of it out there in the heavens, an
image larger than the hillside.
There was an instant when I fancied that the image had expanded over all
the sky—a wraith, a dissipating ghost of the projectile.
It was gone. The stars gleamed alone in the deep purple of the night.
A click sounded. The hum of the Elton ray died into silence. The
luminous wall of the room sprang into opaque reality.