He paused briefly, then went on: "Our first sensation was one of
shock--a reeling of the senses. But it was not severe--it passed almost
at once. We found ourselves clinging there to the instrument table.
To me the room seemed swaying dizzily. My forehead was damp with cold
moisture; a nausea possessed me. I was oppressed; the air of the room
was heavy to breathe."
"The air was snapping with the current," said Martt. "I could see it,
and feel it tingling against my face. And it was heavy to breathe, as
Brett says."
Brett resumed: "But we felt better after a moment. I saw the change
first on the dials. The pointer of the lowest unit dial of the size
series was slowly but visibly moving. I watched as it crept from 1 to
2. We had doubled in size. I gazed about the room. It was unchanged;
and now as my body rapidly adjusted itself to the new conditions, I
began to feel almost normal. Except a queer whirring in my head, and
the nausea which persisted for perhaps an hour, I felt no evidence
of the growth. The room, the vehicle was untrembling. No slightest
evidence within the vehicle of the size-change going on--except the
creeping pointer of the lowest dial. It was moving faster; it had
reached 10. The pointer of the dial beside it--registering in units of
a hundred--now seemed stirring."
Brett gazed at us earnestly. "I want to make myself absolutely clear.
We were then--I suppose a minute or so had elapsed--we were ten times
our original size----"
"Much faster than the vehicle grew in the garden," I exclaimed.
"Yes. I had chanced the possibility of severe shock and thrown the
lever at once to a quarter strength. Martt and Frannie, in the garden,
had put it on only to the one-hundredth part of its power. At all
intensities, the growth, you understand, constantly accelerates.
At unit 10, which we reached in possibly the first minute, we were
ten times our starting size--that is, for earth measurements, our
vehicle from base to tower-top was then one-tenth of a mile. But
soon the pointer had passed 50. And then 100--and the pointer of the
hundred-unit dial had crept to 1.
"With recovered normality of senses we had gone to the windows. I
want you to visualize first what always before we had seen. An
inky black void everywhere surrounding us, in the center of which
seemingly we hung motionless. The brilliant firmament of stars, freed
from the distortion of earth's atmosphere; glittering, blazing like
great diamonds. Pure white, blue-white, or tinged with yellow and
red. The whole extent of the heavens swarming with them. The huge,
spiral nebulous masses fleecy white, with tiny points of blazing
white fire in them. And behind them all that distant ring of seeming
star-dust--immeasurably distant yet glowing like a silver veil, which
in the ancient books they called the 'Milky Way.'
"Near at hand, above us were the tiny planets of our Solar System. The
sun, only a pale white disk from out here near Saturn; the earth--a
star very faint; red Mars, a tiny reddish dot. But Jupiter was
brilliant; and Saturn from our proximity was stupendously beautiful.
The globe itself--a great silver disk, with the sunlight to make a
narrow portion of it into a blazing crescent. The darkened areas of the
globe, even on the shadowed portion, were plain almost as the bands of
Jupiter. And Saturn's rings! Concentric rings--the inner one a trifle
darker--opened up to a narrow angle--a glowing silver band like a broad
hat-brim encircling the planet--a hat-brim over 37,000 miles broad.
[Illustration: "Saturn with its rings was stupendously beautiful from
our proximity."]
"This we saw, with ourselves of unchanging size. But now we were
growing. The change was at first apparent only in the aspect of
Saturn--since it was closest to us. The planet seemed to become a
little smaller--shrinking and creeping toward us. A contraction of its
size--and as though the space between us were diminishing. Yet--as
a seeming paradox--the visual diameter of the globe and the rings
remained almost the same.
"It is difficult to describe. We seemed moving closer to Saturn, yet
in no sense was there any apparent motion. The effect--the result--of
seeming motion--not the motion itself. Martt presently went back to
watch the dials. He called out to me when we had reached unit 1,000. A
thousand times our original size--the vehicle now ten miles in earthly
height. The change had now affected very slightly the entire firmament.
Everywhere a seeming contraction--not so much in the aspect of the
blazing star-points, but in the black void of Space itself. As though
the void were smaller--contracted so that everything in it were of
necessity a little nearer to us. But it was as yet barely noticeable. I
might even have thought it a psychological co-action with the change in
Saturn's aspect--a change unmistakable.
"Saturn, as we grew, had been seemingly smaller and coming visually
nearer to us. Yet our velocity away from it was--in our original
size--seven and one-half million miles an hour. Can I make you realize
that the effect of _both_ motions was apparent? It was as though we
were moving forward to lengthen a dwindling distance, with Saturn
following after us simultaneously to shorten it.
"It was at the thousand unit point--ourselves then ten miles of earthly
height--that I shut off the size-switch. Of visual diameter, Saturn had
really not altered materially."
Brett stopped as though carefully to choose his words. "I'm striving
to give you a clear picture. A distant object of great size may
appear of the same diameter as something smaller and closer. But
you can generally tell which is which. There is a difference of
aspect--impossible to describe, but readily seen. Saturn was like
that--the change in the planet was like a progressive change from
the one condition to the other. It had appeared large and distant;
it changed, to be smaller and closer. Just before I shut off the
size-switch, when our rate of growth had become comparatively rapid,
Saturn took on other motions--I'll tell you about them in a moment.
"Do I make myself clear? I want to. . . . With our growth checked,
there was at once a striking, visual result. We seemed receding from
Saturn so fast that its apparent diameter dwindled very rapidly--a
normal dwindling of rapidly added distance. Presently it was a mere
star--then a pin-point of light. Then it was vanished. Our other
planets of the Solar System had preceded Saturn into invisibility. Then
our sun itself became so faint a star that I lost it. We were beyond
the Solar System--itself wholly lost to the naked eye among the great
star-clusters enveloping it."
V
"Wait," I exclaimed. "There is so much I want to ask you, Brett."
Frannie interposed timidly: "Did you say, Brett, that on earth the
vehicle then would have been ten miles in height?"
"Yes," he agreed.
She commented, "Then your relative Time-dials must have been visibly
moving----"
Dr. Gryce hastily interrupted: "The practical workings of the inherent
Time-change I want Brett to explain carefully. You did not move the
vehicle in Time, did you, Brett?"
"No sir. Not then."
I must have looked puzzled, for Dr. Gryce added: "We mean, Frank, that
the vehicle could have traveled in Time--in earth-Time, for instance,
to go into our past or our future. Brett had not done that. But
immediately the vehicle started a size-change, you understand, there
automatically began a Time-change inherent to that growth. Normal to
it, let me say."
"Oh, yes," I nodded. "I remember you explained that. In relation to its
size----"
"I'll put it this way," Dr. Gryce went on. "That girl out there is
moving through Time at a definite rate. Let us say a year of our Time
would be measured as a second of hers."
"Less than that," Martt interjected.
"Yes lad, I know. But those rough figures will serve for the present
comparison." He turned back to me. "Keep that in mind, Frank. Now
conceive Brett and Martt changing progressively upward in size, from
what they are here on earth, to a size normal to that girl and the
realm she lives in. A corresponding Time-change must take place. At
every point of the voyage in Time and size, the relative values must
agree; the vehicle's Time-rate always must be in inverse proportion to
its position in size."
I nodded. "I think I understand. You mean that when in size the vehicle
had progressed half-way from our size to the girl's, that then the
vehicle's normal Time-rate would be half-way between our Time and hers?"
"Exactly, Frank."
"At this ten-mile size what percentage of the size-journey had been
made?" I asked. I smiled. "I'm trying to imagine how large that girl
may be."
Brett said quickly, "I'll tell you that later. It was some distance
farther on before I could calculate such relative values even as
approximations."
Frannie said, "At that point, Brett, the vehicle began speeding into
the earth's future, didn't it?"
Dr. Gryce exclaimed: "Child, that will only lead us into philosophical
discussion. Beyond the realm of mathematics----"
"I don't think so, Father," Brett said quietly. "I would say that
since everything--Size, Time and Space--is relative, depending
wholly on the viewpoint of the observer--that Frannie's question is
simple enough. To me as observer--to my consciousness there in the
vehicle--every given instant was the Present. The earth was out there
in Space, revolving about its sun; rotating on its axis--its movements
to my consciousness _faster_ than before. To me it was the Present.
The earth was there. I saw it through the electro-telescope. I also
saw your aural ray through the aurometer. The ray swept the sky with
a rapid sweep, since to my altered Time-rate the earth was rotating
faster. But every given instant was my Present.
"However, compare my consciousness to yours on earth. The
earth--rotating faster relative to me--had, while I watched there,
made, let us say, a full rotation in that first five minutes of my
vigil. Relative to me--it was the earth's future Time. I was gazing
upon earth in its _tomorrow_. So I think that I was, as Frannie said,
speeding into the earth's future."
Frannie was triumphant. Dr. Gryce said smilingly, "You put it
clearly, Brett. But it's a philosophical and metaphysical viewpoint
nevertheless. You spoke of Saturn's having another apparent motion near
the end of your size-change?"
"Yes," said Brett. "As our Time-rate became materially slower, the
speeding up of all the motions inherent to the planets grew visible.
Saturn's rotation on its axis became readily visible through the
telescope. And the globe began very slowly shifting sidewise--at nearly
right angles to our course--the visual result of the intensification of
its orbital movement. . . . You were going to ask a question, Frank, a
moment ago?"
I had not forgotten it. "You were telling us, Brett, how you stopped
your growth at the ten-mile size. Almost immediately, you said, Saturn
receded into an invisibility of distance. The entire Solar System
vanished into distance. You had been traveling only seven and one-half
million miles an hour before changing size. It was the new velocity I
wanted to ask about. The whole question of velocity relative to size."
"Relative!" Brett exclaimed. "That's the keynote to it, Frank. Two
differing viewpoints, always. Keep them both in mind--the viewpoint
of earth-size, and the viewpoint of the vehicle-size. I'll try and
explain it now. Once clear to you, our whole experience will clarify to
your understanding. Conceive, from your external viewpoint of earth,
the vehicle out there in Space dropping with a velocity of seven and
one-half million miles an hour. That was its maximum, owing to the
ether-friction. It started to increase in size. Hence its mass grew--in
proportion directly as the cube. As the mass grew greater, the atoms
of the ether became of themselves relatively smaller, less ponderable,
less capable of exerting their frictional drag.
"This should be very clear to you, Frank. In a vacuum, a feather
and a bit of lead fall at equal rates. The mass--the weight--has
nothing to do with it. But in air--where there is a friction--the
heavier object falls faster. The vehicle was like that. Its mass, so
enormously increased, gave it a greatly increased maximum velocity. It
picked up velocity rapidly with its growth. The formulas involved are
intricate--I need only say that after forty-nine minutes of traveling
at the ten-mile size, we had again reached maximum. It was about 200
million miles a minute."
"A minute!" I exclaimed.
"Yes. That is 12,000 million miles an hour, as against seven and
one-half million. The vehicle's length, breadth and width had each
increased to a thousand times their former size. Its mass was the
product of the three--hence one thousand million times greater.
"These are all approximate to the actual figures, you understand. Round
numbers are less confusing. Our resultant velocity, however, was 200
million miles a minute, at the end of the first hour. We were well
beyond the Solar System by then."
Frannie asked, "Brett, why didn't Saturn appear to recede until after
you had stopped your growth?"
"That was merely optical, Frannie. Our velocity away from Saturn was
steadily increasing. But with our increasing size, the space seemed
dwindling--as though Saturn were following after us. With the growth
checked there was a visual reaction--an apparent leaping away. It was
merely optical. Anything else?"
"I'd like to know," I said, "the relation of your Time in the vehicle
at the ten-mile size--its relation to our earth-Time."
"The proportion of one to one thousand," he answered readily. "Seven
seconds to me, then, was about two hours on earth. Could I have seen
the earth when I reached that maximum, it would have made a complete
rotation on its axis--a day of yours--in a minute and twenty-four
seconds to me.
"It's all clear, isn't it? Suppose I go back to the details of our
trip? With ten miles of earthly size, at a velocity of 200 million
miles a minute we were dropping into the black void of Space. The Solar
System was lost presently, even to telescopic vision, but with the
naked eye the firmament of stars was very little changed. I searched
with the myrdoscope for the image of the girl, but did not chance to
pick it up. We were hot again within the vehicle, from the ether
friction--as hot as we had been before.
"Beneath us, in the star-field for which I was heading, was Alpha
Centauri. It is, as you know, one of the very closest stars to our
Solar System--to our earth. In miles, roughly some 25,000,000,000,000.
Four and a third light-years of distance, 4.35 light-years to be exact.
At 200 million miles a minute we would have been some eighty-eight days
getting there."
"I couldn't have stood a trip so long," Martt exclaimed. "I told him
we'd have to increase our size again. Nearly three months to get to the
nearest star--with others a thousand times farther on!"
"There was no reason for us to stay so small," Brett agreed. "Out
there, with the Solar System so far away, I had no fear of disturbing
it."
Again I interrupted. "Brett, the vehicle's velocity was then much
greater than the velocity of light----"
"About eighteen times greater."
"It seems inconceivable," I added. "Impossible for any tangible entity
in Space to attain such velocity."
"Ah, but Frank, that's where you're using the wrong viewpoint," Dr.
Gryce exclaimed warmly. "You're still imagining yourself an observer on
earth. But take the viewpoint of the vehicle. Space was proportionately
smaller than before. Brett gives you the earth-size figures in order to
avoid confusion. From the vehicle's enlarged viewpoint, Brett, what was
its comparative velocity?"
"About twelve million miles an hour," Brett said. "As against a former
seven and one-half million. Not so great a change, Frank?"
"No," I admitted. "But----"
"But you can not quite grasp how the two velocities can be the same?
Existing simultaneously in the same vehicle, only with a differing
viewpoint?"
I think that was my trouble. I nodded, and he said at once, "To the
larger viewpoint, Frank, the Space had diminished a thousand times, to
make a thousand miles become as one mile. Not an _actual_ change--a
relative change only. But twelve million miles an hour, with distance
diminished one thousand times, is the same as twelve thousand million
miles an hour with the distance factor unaltered. You see that, of
course. Or consider the relative Time-values. The vehicle's Time
was seven seconds to about two hours. The exact figures were one to
one thousand. In the vehicle we lived a thousand earth-seconds in one.
Applied, then, to the two viewpoints of velocity, it gives identical
results for the distance traveled. Whatever the factors involved--the
earth-Time; the vehicle-Time; the Space relative to the vehicle; or to
the earth; and the velocity, relative either to the vehicle-size or
earth-size--the result must be mathematically the same. You see? And,
Frank, in describing the progressive size-changes into which we now
plunged, I shall give you always Space with earth-standards, and our
velocity from the viewpoint of earth. It reached tremendous figures;
but you are to remember always that of actuality they must be divided
by the relative size factor. They were never greater than you would
have expected the vehicle to obtain.
"I was saying that we were headed for Alpha Centauri. Again we started
the growth. I threw the switch to its fullest intensity. Martt stayed
to watch the dials; I sat on the floor, gazing down through the window
at the star-field spread out beneath me. When my head had cleared from
the shock of starting the growth, I sat absorbed in watching. Soon
visible movements appeared. The star-drifts began to be apparent. And
we were going toward these stars; the apparent shortening Space, added
to our increasing relative velocity, made their approach visible. In
the field to the sides of us, the stars were shifting upward. Those in
front were spreading apart with a movement very slow but perceptible as
we dropped toward them.
"I do not know how long I sat there; Martt occasionally would call to
me from his post at the dials, but I hardly heard him. Alpha Centauri
presently came rushing forward. As you know, it is a binary--twin stars
a few hundred million miles apart, its components revolving about each
other with a period of eighty-one years. It had been one blazing white
point of light. Then it separated into two. They stayed visually small,
for they were dwindling before the vehicle's growth; but they came
rushing toward us. Soon I could see them separated by a narrow black
ribbon of the void; and could see them revolving one about the other."
"An eighty-one-year period, and you could see it!" I exclaimed.
"Yes--a very slow movement, but I could see it. I would have passed
between them--the ribbon of Space there was widening rapidly, the stars
themselves had become great, blazing white-hot suns. But I was afraid
of the heat; I altered our course to present a slightly repellent side.
The firmament turned partly over. The two stars swung up past our side
window; in visual diameter larger than our earthly sun--they mounted
upward, closed in above us, drew together to form one; a sun at first;
then a brilliant star; then faint, until with the naked eye I lost it.
"Beneath us, the star-field in front was rushing upward much faster
now. The constellations opening; the stars shifting--everywhere was
movement--strange movement, unnatural, fantastic. I confess, Father,
that I was injudicious. Martt was absorbed, fascinated in watching the
dials, and when occasionally he would call to me, I told him everything
was all right."
"I didn't know what was going on," said Martt. "You told me to sit
there and I sat there."
"Of course you didn't know what was going on," Brett smiled. "But I
did, and I think for a time I lost my wits. The stars were thick and
close around us. The nebulæ were opened into individual points of fire.
Everywhere was movement, unreal. Stars rotating visibly; binaries
shifting about each other; other stars shifting about each other; other
stars seeming to enlarge in size, or to diminish, to swing this way
or that with all the optical vagaries of our velocity, our changing
Time and Size; and always those of the star-field in front--beneath
us--spreading to the sides, rushing past our windows, closing in above
us and fading into invisibility.
"A myriad universes in fantastic motion. And suddenly I realized that
these giant suns were very close to us, and very small! Some I had
recognized--blazing globes 100 million miles and more in diameter,
and thought myself ten times that far from them. But it was not so.
I stared at a giant globe 100 million miles in diameter, and with
my viewpoint suddenly changed I saw that it was no more than a tiny
glowing meteor, sweeping past a few miles away!
"All this star-field, little balls, rolling close upon us. A miracle
that none hit us, though some time before, I had had the wit to call
to Martt to make all the faces repellent. By inertia only, we plunged
onward, repelling what lay in our path.
"I saw a wandering asteroid--a few hundred miles perhaps in diameter.
It was whirling on its axis like a ball thrown into the air. A
whimsical humor--a madness perhaps--had descended upon me. There was
nothing but the asteroid momentarily close before us, and I called to
Martt to throw attraction into the bottom of the vehicle. The asteroid
came rushing. But shrinking--shrinking until I laughed aloud to see it
dwindle to a ball I could have held in my hand; and dwindle further
until impotently it struck the floor window with a tiny point of fire
from its fusing rock and metal. A burning cinder which scarce would
have hurt me had I caught it in my naked hands.