"And I've noticed during my convalescence that the internes that
continually hover around my door have a look as if--well, shall I say
that they look more like policemen than internes?"
I laughed nervously. "I think you are a mental case, Miss Mayo," I
said. "I shall have to call in a specialist."
"You do not need to deny it, Fred," she said. "Why do you suppose I
insisted that you perform the operation? Why didn't I let you call in
someone else? It was because you are the only man in the world that I
trust, Fred. How much did Gustav Keeshwar offer you to do me in?"
Before I could stop myself I opened my mouth and blurted the truth.
"One million dollars!"
"Whew!" Trella whistled softly. "I'm worth a lot to you! I must be
getting close if Keeshwar will pay a million to see me out of the way."
"Trella," I pleaded. "What is it all about? What's behind this
mystery?"
"If you turned down a million dollars for my sake, I think I can trust
you," she said. "Supposing I was about to invent a new method of
locomotion? Can you see where Keeshwar might find me obnoxious?"
"A new kind of space ship?"
Trella shook her head. "A new kind of locomotion. Animals either swim
or walk. Man also uses wheels."
"He also can fly. So can birds."
"Flying is simply swimming through the air and crawling, as a worm
or snake, is gliding, like swimming. Space ships swim, too, after a
fashion. Boats swim through the sea and sleds swim on ice. Therefore we
have only three kinds of locomotion: Legs, wheels and sleds. Another
might revolutionize everything."
"But there couldn't be any other way to travel. Even the planets 'sled'
through ether."
"There is another way. It will open exploration to the furthest limits
of the galaxy."
"I can see why Keeshwar was so interested."
"As soon as I'm out of bed, I want you to call on me at my laboratory,
Fred. I'll show you something that will make your eyes pop out of your
head."
I turned to leave, when something on the window pane caught my eye.
It was a small, cherry-red spot, about the size of a twenty-five cent
piece.
The minute I saw it, I knew what it was. I shouted to the
interne--really a detective--outside the door, and lifted Trella into
my arms. I must admit that I handled her a little roughly and she
groaned as I hurried her out of the room. But what I did was necessary.
As I left the room, the glass of the pane melted and a beam flashed
across the room, striking the bed where Trella had been an instant
before. That beam was an Oronic Ray, 5,000 degrees hot, of the type
used in welding the rockets of space ships.
It was evident that Gustav Keeshwar intended to finish Trella Mayo
whether I would help him or not.
* * * * *
A few weeks later I visited Trella in her laboratory.
"I'm anxious to see this incomprehensible conveyance," I explained.
"At least, I'm glad you are taking an interest in something besides my
safety and my operation scar," she replied.
She led me through a corridor toward a heavy steel door, which she
unlocked.
"You are the first person besides myself to go into this room in the
past five years," Trella added.
I scarcely know what I had expected to see. What would anyone expect
to see, if he was told he was going to be shown a machine that
neither walked, glided nor rolled? Such a contraption is beyond human
experience.
It was a long, hollow tube, large enough to hold a human body. It was
made of quartz and on each side was a cylindrical, low power atomic
energy machine.
"This," Trella said, "is the translator."
"The what?"
"I call it my space-time translator, which someday will make the rocket
as obsolete for space travel as the horse for surface travel. It will
take an object from one point in space-time to another instantly."
"Instantly?"
"There is a small lapse of time," Trella confessed. "You see the
machine has two motors, one for starting the operation and the other
for completing it. It takes about one second's time to switch the
motive power from one motor to the other."
The machine, except for the motors, was made entirely of quartz and
silver. On the right side of the machine was a long strip of silver
running the full length of the tube. It was about three inches wide and
it was connected with a knife-like blade of silver on the left side
of the tube by a strand of silver wire. Silver was used, of course,
because it was the best known conductor of electricity and other forms
of energy.
"It would be wonderful if it worked," I said.
"It does work," Trella said. "We sent two guinea pigs to the Sirius
system yesterday morning. We got them back in an hour with a copy of
yesterday's issue of _The Sirian Daily Universe_. Here's the paper."
She held out a copy of the beautifully printed daily magazine. On the
cover was the date, August V2, 504 (3002).
It was customary for terrestrials to use terrestrial dates wherever
their outposts were located in the stellar system. But instead of using
the terrestrial year--as shown in parenthesis on _The Sirian Daily
Universe_--the year always was reckoned from the date when the planet
was first visited by an expedition from the solar system. Although days
were not always the same, twenty-four hour periods could be reckoned
quite easily so that on some planets a single day might have more than
one terrestrial date, and on others a single day would be a fraction of
a legal day. The number of actual days usually was indicated by a Roman
numeral preceding the Arabic figure. Thus August V2 indicated that
Sirius had risen and set five times while the sun had done so twice
during the month of August.
"Unbelievable!" I said. "How does it work?"
"It operates through time," Trella explained. "It takes a short cut
between two parallel instants."
She took a guinea pig from a cage in the laboratory. She put the
wriggling animal inside the quartz tube and strapped it firmly in the
center.
"Watch," she said.
She turned a switch on one of the boxes. A low hum arose from the
atomic motor. Trella watched a dial located in the top of the quartz
tube until an arrow pointed to a gold star. Then she pressed a button
in the motor on the right side of the machine.
I noticed that the translator had controls that could be operated from
inside the tube as well as from the outside.
There were two distinct gasps of the motor. Half of the guinea pig
disappeared with the first gasp and the remaining half disappeared with
the second.
Where the tube had been a second before, there was nothing now.
"He's on Proxima Centaur now," Trella said. "I managed to equip a
laboratory there about two years ago. It was through that laboratory
that Keeshwar learned of my experiments in translation. My men on
Proxima will send back the guinea pig in a few minutes."
We sat down and waited. Trella explained the machine, although at the
time the explanation was a little over my head. The actual translation
was accomplished by the pushing of one motor and the pulling of another
across an extra-dimensional space. Half of the object to be translated
was hurled across space by the pushing of the first motor. The second
motor, which operated automatically, began pulling the other half,
including the first motor, after it as soon as it materialized at the
end of the journey.
By means of radio signals the exact location of every explored planet
had been determined. It was therefore only a matter of mathematical
calculation to find the target. There was some risk, of course, if a
mathematical error were made in computing the range but considering the
risks involved in ordinary methods of interstellar flight everything
was in favor of the translator.
"The whole secret of the invention lies in locating the proper _Now_ in
space-time," Trella explained.
"The proper _Now_?" I asked.
"Of course," she said, "the _Now_ we experience on earth is not the
same _Now_ that exists simultaneously on Rihlon, the second planet
of Proxima Centaur. We are dealing with space-time, Fred. Time is a
dimension, it stretches like a line through space. If we connect the
_Now_ of the present with the _Now_ of ten minutes ago, we have a
straight line, just as we would have a straight line if we connected
any two points in the universe. The _Now_ of the present and the _Now_
ten minutes ago on Rihlon also would be a straight line, but it would
not be the same straight line."
"But it would be parallel!" I exclaimed, beginning to see her point.
"Oh, so you _do_ know something about mathematics?"
"Of course! If you connect the _Nows_ of the present on both the earth
and Rihlon, you have a straight line, perpendicular to the parallel
time lines of both the earth and Rihlon. Why couldn't your invention be
used for time travel? Couldn't you connect the present--_Now_ of Rihlon
with any _Now_ in the time line of the earth--any _Now_ of the past or
future?"
"The idea occurred to me, but it won't work," Trella replied. "There's
a serious obstacle we can't overcome. In going backward or forward in
time we do not travel in lines perpendicular to the parallel time lines
of the earth and Rihlon--or for any other planet for that matter. But
we travel like this--" Trella drew a figure on a piece of paper.
[Illustration:
A G E B
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