"How long my mood of ironic madness may have lasted I can not say. I
barely noticed our actual entry into the Galactic Plane. Enormous suns
whirling past, now relatively not many times bigger than the vehicle
itself. Others, distant a mile or so--or a billion miles if you want
the other viewpoint--with their magnified drift making them dart
crazily past. I gave no heed to passing time; I remember only that at
last the star-field beneath us was thinning out. Stray clusters--a
myriad glowing little balls hurled aside by our rush. But there were
visibly less and less of them, until, quite suddenly, I realized that
unbroken inky darkness lay ahead. And to the sides and above us, the
star clusters, nebulæ swirling like silver mist--it was all fading.
Winking little points up there behind us--winking and vanishing.
"We were in blackness unbroken. Dropping into a void of blackness
with velocity inconceivable. Suddenly I was frightened. Stiff from
so long upon the floor, I rose and hurried to Martt. We shut off the
size-switch; made all the faces repellent. But there was nothing to
repel; nothing to stop our downward rush into that blackness. It
seemed all at once a blackness pregnant with unseen things of fearsome
aspect. . . . The size-dials showed us to be near unit 50,000,000.
Fifty million times our original size! The vehicle 500,000 miles high!
"The relative Time-dials--showing relative earth-Time--were whirling.
Our Time in the vehicle was less than a single second to a year on
earth. My mind leaped back to you. Every second we lived there in the
vehicle you here on earth were living more than a year. A century
of yours was little more than a minute to us. The earth's future,
whirling on a thousand years while Martt and I sat there confused at
the instrument table. A tiny little earth, spinning like a top upon its
axis, flashing around its tiny sun with a complete revolution every
second!
"The velocity indicators, as well, were in rapid motion. The indicator
of the miles-per-hour unit was an indistinguishable blur. And miles
per minute--and per second--we could read none of them, so fast
were they moving. The light-year distance pointers were in motion.
We were piling up light-years of distance every moment. The total
stood--as momentarily I read it--at between eleven and twelve thousand
light-years of total distance traveled. Light, speeding at 186,000
miles a second, must go a year to make a light-year unit of distance.
And we had gone nearly 12,000 light-years! I read our present velocity
on the light-year velocity-dial. It was 3480 light-years per hour! And
still rapidly accelerating!
"The panic of fear possessed us at the strangeness of it all--at that
void of blackness--soundlessness--into which we were plunging; and
even our plunge unmarked by the faintest trembling of the vehicle. A
panic. I started to use the aurometer to search for your ray. Absurd!
The absurdity of it made me laugh hysterically. Your ray had been
extinguished thousands of years in my Past. I tried the myrdoscope--to
locate the image of the girl--to verify our direction, for abruptly
I realized I had, in that empty black void, nothing by which I might
locate our position.
"The myrdoscope was inoperative! I could not locate the girl-image--nor
anything else. I tried with the electro-telescope at its greatest
power--tried frantically to pick up some star-image behind us. I could
not. I did not think they were as yet beyond its range--it merely
had gone dead. The current in it would not hum. It was dead like the
myrdoscope. We wondered then if our dials were working accurately. In
our panic we doubted everything. And knew, with a stark terror upon
us--knew that we were lost. Lost perhaps in Size and Time. And lost in
black Space, empty, soundless, unfathomable!"
_CHAPTER 7_
"A SINGLE STARLIT NIGHT--AN ETERNITY"
Brett had momentarily paused in his narrative, but when we would have
plied him with questions he waved us aside.
"Let us finish first. The panic that was upon us with this
knowledge--belief--that we were lost out there in Time and Size and
Space did not last long, for we fought against it. And presently we
were calmer--able to reason. Our size-dials were at rest--we had shut
off the switch. By earth standards the vehicle was 500,000 miles in
height. Our relative Time was a century of yours, to a little more
than a minute of ours. Some 8,000 years into your earth-future had
already piled up on the earth standard Time-dial--and we were adding
one hundred years to it almost every minute. Our velocity had reached
a maximum of 3480 light-years per hour--and we were 12,000 light-years
from earth. The velocity was now lessening a trifle; it dropped nearly
to an even 3,000. With unchanging size now, with nothing near us to
repel or attract, the ether-friction overcame inertia to reach a
balance of forces.
"We conquered our fear--began to reason what we should do. It was of
course futile to look for your aural ray. It had been extinguished
thousands of years. We wanted to go on to our destination, and it was
the non-operation of the myrdoscope which worried and puzzled us. . . .
I was sure, Father, that up to this point in the voyage I had made
no serious error of direction. The image of the girl should have been
before us. But the myrdoscope would not work."
"The Time----" I suggested.
"Ah, no, Frank! We had progressed very little into the Time of that
girl's life. She should still have been reclining there on the bank; or
at least the bank itself should have been there. We puzzled over what
could be the trouble with the myrdoscope. We found the trouble----"
"I found it," said Martt eagerly.
Brett nodded. "Yes, it was Martt who reasoned it out. A curious
explanation--and one, I think, which involves the greatest of all the
issues we had encountered. The myrdoscope would not operate for a very
big, but very simple reason. You would think to find the answer in
Science? Not so. It was a theosophical reason, Father."
Brett was very earnest, and very solemn. "It was my purpose, you
understand, to reach the girl at the _exact moment_ we had always seen
her. We planned to make our Time before reaching her, coincident with
hers of that given instant. Remember that. Consider then: At this other
instant when now we were trying to see her through the myrdoscope, our
Time-rate had carried us about 8,000 years into earth's future. But
also, it had carried us some forty minutes into the girl's future.
"Not science now. Metaphysics, perhaps--and certainly Theology, and
Theosophy. We were destined _to be with the girl during those forty
minutes_. And we could not now look ahead and _see ourselves_--see our
future actions.
"Father, you've spoken of that. What you said was true. It is not God's
way that man should look at his own little future. Not best for us.
The Almighty knows it, and has prohibited it. Chaos would result, for
we live upon hope. There was no scientific reason why the myrdoscope
should not show us what we were destined to do during those forty
minutes. Yet--it was dead. Dark. Inoperative.
"And this now I know: With all the science in the world there are some
things you can not do--those things which transgress the Creator's
laws. Before them--against all scientific reason, logic--we must fail.
You can not see your future; you can only live it once. Nor can you go
back through Time to stop in your own Past; to live again your life--to
do differently than you did before. It is unthinkable--impossible, even
though now we have the scientific means to accomplish it. It is not the
Almighty's plan--and He will not let us do it.
"We reasoned all this out. It was simple enough. We had our Time-switch
which would change our Time-rate irrespective of the normal Time-change
inherent to our size. . . . That was what puzzled you awhile ago,
Frank? Well, now we used that Time-change mechanism.
"It brought us new sensations. A shock, a queer humming lightness
pervading the vehicle, the air, our own bodies. A lightness as though
almost we were mere shadows of our former selves. Specters, a ghostly
vehicle, humming with an infinite vibration.
"Presently that all wore away; or at least we grew used to it--so
that had there been anything in Space to see, as very soon there was,
ourselves were the substance--all else the shadows.
"We went backward very slightly in Time. I suppose some forty minutes
of the girl's Time. I tested it by the myrdoscope. The instrument
flashed on! It was operating! A continuous _retrograde_ action of the
Time-mechanism was necessary to hold us upon that single given instant
of the girl's existence. The calculation was intricate; I reached it,
partly by mathematics, partly by experimentation with the myrdoscope.
I saw fragments of the girl's immediate Past, as our Time-change swung
us into it. Saw her arrive alone in the woodland dell. Saw her lie
down, at ease, with a security unsuspecting; saw the grinning, vicious
little gnomes creep upon her; the leering giant appear. And made, then,
another startling discovery--I'll tell you about it in a moment.
"At last I had the Time-change correctly gaged; we were--in relation
to the girl--standing still in Time. Presently we again increased our
size. An alteration of the Time-mechanism was needed; a progressive
alteration. But this was simple to calculate and to adjust."