"What--what do you mean?"
"Out there. All of us."
"But I thought you said--"
"Sure, I'm scared stiff. A normal man would be. It's in our genes,
according to your father. But I'm also a man. What the devil d'you think
it was first got man out of his cave and started along the road to
civilization and the stars? It was curiosity. Fear restraining him, and
curiosity egging him on. Which do you think won in the end?"
"Oh, Ramsey, I could kiss you!"
"Go right ahead," Ramsey said, and she did.
They opened the airlock. They went outside smiling.
But Vardin, who went with them, wasn't smiling. There was sadness
instead.
* * * * *
In cumbersome spacesuits, the five Irwadians made their way from the
_Dog Star_ to the _Enterprise_. Ramar Chind and his three policemen
carried m.g. guns; Garr Symm was unarmed. Chind used a whorl-neutralizer
to force the pattern of the lock on the outer door of the _Enterprise's_
airlock. Then the five of them plunged inside the ship.
The inner door was not closed.
The _Enterprise_ was empty.
Garr Symm looked doubtfully at the gray murkiness behind them. Although
the _Dog Star_ stood out there less than a quarter of a mile away, they
couldn't see it through the murk.
"Where did they go?" Ramar Chind asked.
Symm waved vaguely behind them.
Chind and his men turned around.
Gritting his teeth against the fear which welled up like nausea from the
pit of his stomach, Garr Symm went with them.
At that moment they all heard the music.
"You hear it?" Ramsey asked softly. His voice did not carry on the
airless world, of course. But he spoke, and the words were understood,
not merely by Margot, who could read his mind, but by Vardin as well.
"Music," said Margot. "Isn't it--beautiful?"
* * * * *
Ramsey nodded slowly. He could barely see Margot, although he held her
hand. He could barely see Vardin although they stood hand in hand too.
The music was un-Earthly, incapable of repetition, indescribably the
loveliest sound he had ever heard. He wanted to sink down into the
obscuring gray murk and weep and listen to the haunting, sad, lovely
strains of sound forever.
"What can it possibly be?" Margot asked.
Surprisingly, it was Vardin who answered. "Music of the Spheres," she
said. "It's a legend on Vega III, my world."
"And on Earth," Ramsey said.
Vardin told them: "On all worlds. And, like all such legends, it has a
basis in reality. This is the basis."
That didn't sound like timid little Vardin at all. Ramsey listened in
amazement. He thought he heard Vardin laugh.
Music. But didn't the notes need the medium of time in which to be
heard? How could they hear music here at all? Or were they hearing it?
Perhaps it merely impinged on their minds, their souls, just as they
were able to hear one another's thoughts as words....
They'd never understand fully, Ramsey knew suddenly. Perhaps they could
grasp a little of the nature of this place, a shadow here, the
half-suggestion of the substance of reality there, a stillborn thought
here, a note of celestial music there, the timeless legacy of proto-man,
whatever proto-man was....
"The fog is lifting!" Vardin cried.
The fog was not lifting.
Then it was.
Ramsey would never forget that. Vardin had spoken while the dense gray
murk enveloped them completely.
Then it began to grow tenuous.
As if Vardin's words had made it so. Little Vardin, shy, frightened
Vardin, suddenly, inexplicably, the strongest, surest one among them....
The sky, white and dazzling, glistened. The gray murk glistened too, a
hundred yards off in all directions, like a wall of polished glass
surrounding them.
In the very middle of the bell-jar of visibility granted them all at
once, stood a black rectangular object.
"The teleporter!" Margot cried. "The matter-transmitter! I know it is. I
_know_ it is!"
Ramsey stood waiting breathlessly.
No, he realized abruptly, not breathlessly. You couldn't say
breathlessly.
For Ramsey had not breathed, not once, since they left the _Enterprise_.
You didn't breathe on a timeless world. You merely--somehow--existed.
"It's opening!" Margot cried.
The black rectangle, ominously coffin-shaped, was indeed opening.
"The matter transmitter," Margot said a second time. "The secret of
proto-man, of our ancestors who colonized all the worlds of space with
it, instantly, at the same cosmic moment. Think of what it means,
Ramsey, can you? Instantaneous travel, anywhere, without the need for
energy since energy cannot be used here, without the passage of time
since time does not exist here." She stood transfixed, looking at the
black box. The lid had lifted at right angles to the rest of the box.
* * * * *
Margot said, in the whisper of an awed thought: "Who controls it
controls the galaxy...."
And she walked toward the box.
At that moment Ramsey had a vision. He saw--or thought he saw--Margot
Dennison in the costume she had worn when they first met. She stood,
eyes wide, fearful, expectant, before a chess-board. The pieces seemed
to be spaceships. It was a perfectly clear vision, but it was the only
such vision Ramsey had ever been vouchsafed in his life. He was no
mystic. He did not know what to make of it.
Playing chess with Margot was--proto-man.
Ramsey only saw his hand.
A hand perhaps five million years old.
He blinked. The vision persisted, superimposed over Margot's figure as
she walked toward the box.
A game, he thought. Because we don't understand it. Not that kind of
power. Not the power a matter-transmitter would give. A cosmic game on
a chess-board which wasn't quite a chess-board, with a creature who had
never lived as we know life and so could never die....
With the future of the galaxy hanging in the balance. Life or death for
man hanging on a slim thread, because man wasn't ready for
matter-transmission, couldn't hope to use it wisely, would use it
perhaps for war, transmitting lethal weapons, thermonuclear,
world-destroying weapons, instantly through space, for delivery
anywhere, negating time....
Death hovered.
"Wait!" Ramsey called, and ran forward.
Just then five new figures, space-suited, appeared under the gleaming
dome.
"Stop that woman!" a voice which Ramsey should not have been able to
hear but which he somehow heard perfectly cried. "Stop her!"
M.g. guns were raised, fired.
Without effect.
Three of the spacesuited figures ran after Margot as the voice repeated:
"Stop her! The box is mine, mine!"
It was Garr Symm's voice.
Ramsey did not know if he should stop Margot himself, or fight Symm's
men. Although they couldn't use their weapons on this world, they could
still hurt--possibly even kill--Margot. Ramsey turned and waited for
them.
The strange, mystic vision was gone. He saw only three space-suited
figures, saw Margot walking steadily toward the box. Either she was
moving very slowly or the box retreated or it was further away than it
had looked at first. For she hadn't reached it yet.
Ramsey met the space-suited figures head-on.
There were three of them, but they were awkward in their suits,
cumbersome, incapable of quick responses.
Ramsey hit the first one in the belly and darted back. His fist felt
contact with the soft bulk of the insulined suit, then with the harder
bulk of the man. He struck again, harder this time.
* * * * *
The scaly green face of the Irwadi within the space-suit grimaced with
pain. He doubled over and fell, his helmet shattering against the ground
at Ramsey's feet.
Then an incredible thing happened. The Irwadi opened his mouth to
scream. His face froze. He lost his air. His face bloated.
And he died.
Ramsey couldn't believe his eyes.
It was not possible to die from lack of air or from cold on a world
without the time continuum. Ramsey, Vardin and Margot had proved that by
venturing out without protection.
But the Irwadi had died.
Mental suggestion?
Because he thought he would die?
Because that was the only way you could perish on a world lacking in the
time dimension--by your own thoughts?
The second space-suited figure closed with Ramsey awkwardly. Ramsey hit
him. The man of Irwadi fell, his helmet cracked, he tried to scream--and
died.
The third man fled.
Ramsey ran after Margot. "Wait!" he cried. He couldn't talk to her about
his fantastic vision. It was personal. She wouldn't understand. Mystic
experience always is like that. And yet, with the conviction that only a
mystic can have--although he certainly was no mystic--Ramsey knew the
galaxy would be in grave trouble if mankind were given the secret of
matter-transmission.