For the most part, the vessel had proceeded without producing any sense
of motion. A violent shift would have dislodged everything loose in
the shell--the scaffolding, ladders, the temporarily secured electric
lights--and yet there had been nothing of the sort. Once in a while,
they felt a trembling jar. This probably was caused by the impact
of a meteorite. But thus far, no such bodies had pierced the heavy
insulation of resistant clay.
There was now, however, quite definite indication that they were moving
in space. Observations taken at intervals showed that the "moon" was
coming closer. Presently, the irregularities on the edge of the disc
were apparent to the eye, and shadowy configurations on its rocky
surface could be discerned.
After some days, Marlin developed a new suspicion.
He checked his observations carefully. There was no doubt about it.
They were no longer approaching the mass but were drifting in an orbit
around it--either that, or it was rotating around the sphere. And about
this time he made a further discovery. A second body had appeared in
the heavens--and presently there was a third.
"There's only one explanation," he reported tersely at a mealtime
gathering. "We're in the asteroid belt."
DuChane alone seemed to know what this meant.
"Dave seems to be jumping at conclusions, but assuming that he's right,
we've swung out beyond the orbit of Mars--somewhere between it and
Jupiter. There's a region of small planets, masses of rock, ranging up
to four or five hundred miles in diameter. Supposed to be fragments of
a planet that broke up somehow."
"Or didn't quite jell in the making," corrected Marlin. "I believe
that's the modern scientific view. More than nine hundred of them have
been charted though I've no doubt there must be innumerable smaller
fragments."
"What's the chance of our gettin' through without bein' hit?" demanded
McGruder.
"How should I know? As a matter of fact, I don't think we're on our way
through. Looks as if we've established an orbit--at least around that
big one."
"Anything we can do about it?"
Marlin regarded him impersonally.
"Nothing," he said. "Exactly nothing. We've no more control over our
fate at present than we've had since we started."
Sally gave a mirthless laugh. "That makes it swell! All we've got to do
is wait--and wait--and see what this old ball intends to do with us."
Pearl volunteered a remark which, in its unexpectedness, caused them
all to look at her.
"So many stones," she breathed. "Lonely stones."
DuChane leaped to his feet.
"The girl knew!" he shouted. "She knew! We thought she was talking
gibberish, but she was telling us where we'd wind up. Stones! Lonely
stones! Asteroids!"
"Of course Pearl knows!" crowed Maw Barstow. "Didn't I tell you?"
Norma rarely took part in their discussions. She spoke now with bitter
conviction. A flush of intensity lighted her wan features.
"It was all intended! I could feel it when I lay there in my
stupor--just as if I was a part of it and knew where we were going and
why. It's a soulless thing! We don't mean anything to it--not any more
than grubs. This is only the beginning--it's going to be more and more
terrible. We'll be ground to fragments--"
She closed her lips and stared, shudderingly, as if into space.
McGruder eyed her with resentment. "It's a lot of hogwash," he asserted
with hollow confidence.
* * * * *
The nine days' wonder of it gradually became common-place to the rest,
but Marlin spent a greater share of his waking time at the observation
post. The three moons were joined by more. There were presently a
number of gleaming bodies revolving around the sphere, the count
increasing almost at every revolution. At one time, Marlin counted
eighteen of fairly good size and no doubt several were out of range of
the periscope.
The strangeness of it was slowly borne upon him.
"Why should these planetoids be revolving around us?" he questioned.
"They're reputed to have eccentric orbits, but we seem to have barged
in on a small system revolving around one common center. And the most
cockeyed thing of all is that we're apparently that center."
There might be some other explanation, but the reasonable one seemed
to be that the vessel was swinging through the vast planetoid belt,
"picking up" stellar bodies as it approached them. Each rock concretion
drawn into the ever-growing system increased its mass attraction for
other bodies, and thus the accumulation grew, like an immense snowball.
Theoretically, there was support for the assumption. The plates within
the sphere exercised an attraction which approximated Earth gravity.
Normally, the attraction of so small an object in space would have been
slight, but thus augmented, it might act as a magnet, drawing much
larger bodies out of their natural orbits.
"Still, if that's the case," he reasoned, "they'd keep drawing closer.
They'd eventually crush our sphere by the very force of its own
gravity."
His mind pictured a churning mass of mountainous and smaller rocks,
rolling round and round each other in ever-narrowing orbits, crashing
and grinding together, probably generating heat in the process,
eventually fusing into a solid mass.
"Nice prospect," he reflected with a shudder. "Where'll we be when that
takes place? Somewhere near the center, from all indications."
The prospect revealed through the periscope was awe-inspiring, but
increasingly fearsome. For one exciting hour, Marlin watched while
two planetoids collided and slowly ground each other to fragments.
On another occasion, a huge mass lazily crossed his field of vision
so close that he could discern great areas of what looked like ice,
mingled with towering spires of rock. He could easily imagine himself
looking down on a mountain glacier.
"Why not?" he reflected. "There's no reason why there shouldn't
be frozen water in this debris. Presumably the general mass is
constituted of the same rock, minerals, and gases as the other planets,
including Earth. Some of it could be frozen air--or its constituent
gases--considering the absolute zero out there."
He recalled reading the contention of Halbfass that some earth
hailstorms originate in outer space. The scientist had produced
considerable data in support of his theory that such bombardments may
be of stellar origin. There was the case of an iceberg twenty feet in
diameter, reported from Dharwar, India, in 1838, and a still earlier
case of a block of ice "as big as an elephant" which reputedly fell in
the same region during the days of Tippoo Sahib.
Unless Marlin was mistaken there were celestial icebergs among the
growing mass of planetary debris circling the sphere.
The picture he had envisioned of the planetoid bodies closing in on the
sphere, with its augmented gravitation, had seemed at first fantastic.
It was taking on more and more the aspect of grim, threatening reality.
Collisions between bodies in the surrounding space became more frequent
as their orbits definitely spiraled inward. Once a fragment drifted so
close that it almost seemed to graze the sphere. As Marlin tensed for
the seemingly inevitable impact, it passed by. But on its return would
it not be materially closer?
That particular fragment did not return. Perhaps it collided with
another and was pulverized or deflected from its course. But the sphere
might not escape so easily the next time.
Occasionally, his vision would be obscured by what seemed to be a
cloud of dust. It was undoubtedly just that--a field of particles
from the grinding and colliding of rock masses, settling toward the
gravitational pull of the sphere. On another occasion, the obscuring
cloud appeared to be sleet--a mass of iceberg fragments, or perhaps
more tenuous gas in solidified form.
* * * * *
Since that one shuddering outburst, Norma had seemingly regained
her self-control. She appeared only occasionally at meal times,
tight-lipped, reserved. Often Marlin saw her standing on a secluded
part of the superstructure, wrapped in her moody thoughts. She climbed
one day to the observation platform beside him.
"What can you see through that thing?" she asked.
"Take a look," he invited. "It's terrifying, but inspiring too--when
you reflect that mortal eyes never looked upon it before."
She studied the awesome prospect for a minute, then drew away,
shivering as if with cold.
"Give it to me straight," she demanded. "What's the payoff? Here we are
in a thin-shelled bubble floating through a tumble of jagged rocks and
icebergs. They're drawing closer all the time, aren't they?"
He temporized. "My biggest worry right now is that the dust fragments,
settling down on us, will bury the periscope head. That will be the
last of our observations."
"I said give it to me straight," she retorted.
"All right. Your guess is as good as mine. Frankly, it looks like the
end. But it looked like the end when we shot off into space. Somehow
we've existed up to now." He spoke impersonally, trying to keep the
sympathy he felt out of his voice: "Come to think, Norma, I'm puzzled--"
He stopped, but she finished for him.
"You can't understand why a person who's been through what I have
should get the willies now. I'm not afraid of something I can fight.
I'm not afraid of dying. It's eerie things you can't fight that get
me. Hearing that girl Pearl talk gives me the creeps. She calls this a
'little world.' What does she mean?"
Marlin started. He had used the term himself; probably that was how it
came to fall from Pearl's lips.
"I know what she means," Norma answered her own question vehemently.
"It is a little world. I was a part of it, I tell you, while I
lay there between life and death. I sensed things through its
consciousness--if you can imagine such a thing. I knew what all of you
were doing, just as if you were maggots crawling around inside of me. I
had a feeling of what it was bound for--this grinding and crushing and
churning in space. And we're no more to it than the mice and bugs that
happened to get mired in the sticky clay while it was forming."
Marlin looked at her blankly. Despite her vehemence, she had herself
under control--though at the cost of what effort he could only guess.
The strange thing was that he himself had been subject to like fancies.
"Natural forces are--rather impersonal," he conceded.
"I hate natural forces! I hate this little world and everybody in it!
Why did you help pull me back to life? I never wanted to live. I could
have kicked off in a gunfight and had no beef. But here we're helpless
like rats in a trap. Why don't we all kill ourselves and get it over
with?"
Marlin shrugged. It was pleasanter talking to Pearl. Her unruffled
poise almost amounted to an assurance that nothing could happen which
particularly mattered.
* * * * *
On her next visit, with Norma's outburst fresh in mind, he reverted to
the subject Pearl had once inspired.
"That idea about the world having a consciousness of its own may not
be altogether screwy," he told her. "It would explain a lot of things
that we take for granted. As an entity, it might very logically take
a hand in the involvement of beings in its sphere of influence. Our
surface life--the flora and fauna, including man--no doubt play an
essential part in its evolution. The Earth entity, with its natural
forces--the winds, tides, changes of temperature, volcanic eruptions,
and such like--could easily direct the spread of these forms.
"Come to think--that's just what it has been doing, from the dawn of
life. The only question is whether it happened by intention. Of course,
I'm too much of a reasoning creature to believe such rot."
He stopped, half-awaiting the echoed response, "Such rot," but it was
not forthcoming. From a pocket in the girl's soiled dress where she
kept her strangely revived pet, a pair of beady eyes looked out at him
brightly.
"All right, maybe I shouldn't have said a reasoning creature, but a
skeptical creature. After all, it's as unreasonable to disbelieve as
to believe--when you have no proof either way. Well, let's assume that
you're right."
"Pearlie is right," she assured him.
"H'mm. Maybe so. Well, assuming all this, I suppose the same entity
could carry the process further and cause all the activities of
so-called civilization. It could stir up the restlessness that sends
explorers and colonists to distant parts of the globe. It could inspire
persecutions, such as those that drove the Pilgrim fathers across the
ocean. It could drive men through greed, lust of conquest--any number
of urges. War--perhaps that's Nature's way of purging elements she
wants to get rid of, or preparing for some new stage of development.
Which brings the topic down to us."
He glanced at her, half expecting a response, but she merely smiled in
her vaguely knowing way.
"We all seemed to be free agents," he went on, "but somehow we drifted
toward old Eli's shelter--a bunch of misfits that weren't of any
particular use in Earth's economy. What financiers not under some
strange influence would have invested in Eli's wild theories? And that
pit of encrusted mire where the old coot was led to build his sphere.
Who knows what substances were brought together by what we call natural
forces, and mixed into the right composition to protect us for this
dash across space?"
The sphere gave a trembling lurch. Something had brushed its surface,
but in his intensity he scarcely noticed.
"There are only two ways of looking at it," he declared, breathing
heavily. "Either the whole thing was a freakish combination of
accidents, or--it was consciously directed. I'm just sufficiently
space-struck to entertain the possibility that it might be conscious
purpose. What do you say, Pearl? Accident--or purpose?"
"Or purpose," she assured him dutifully.
He gave a short laugh. "That was hardly fair. I should have phrased it
the other way around, knowing your fondness for repeating last words."