Valerie grasped his hand and Martia's. "Let's all go through together,"
she suggested, quietly.
They drew close to each other, held hands, and formed a straight
line of five as they walked through the mirror together--just as the
corridor behind them filled with light again and a pair of bloodshot
eyes noted their departure....
* * * * *
This was definitely a tremendous, subterranean city, or the beginning
of one. But its only inhabitants, other than the alien, seemed to
be the survivors of MATS flight 702. They were still in a state of
hypnosis, standing there on the pillared mezzanine that overlooked the
vast room below and beyond them. Other mezzanines were visible on the
far side of that tremendous chamber, and beneath them a dozen or so
tunnel entrances indicated that there was much to be seen further on.
Among the people who stood out there on the mezzanine were Pee Bee
and Scarface, also in a trance, as well as the Texas GIs, the missing
WAACs, Martia's governess, Emily, the two mothers, Mr. Langham, Sir
Rollins--and Lady Dewitt.
Martia might have cried out and run to her mother were it not for the
fact that the alien, himself, confronted them.
They stood in an alcove that was half filled with banks of controls and
instruments. The alien stood before these controls and glared at them
purposefully as they came through the teletransmitter. His neck was
dark with dried blood, and the three arrows still protruded from his
side. His stooping posture gave more evidence than before that he was
growing weaker.
As they came through and caught sight of him and the others, one of his
hands moved on the control panel, then paused.
_Don't do that!_--came a sharp command into his mind.
He straightened up suddenly, his single eye brightening in shocked
surprise as he looked first at Henry, then at Martia.
Valerie, Peggy and Uncle Andy watched the alien, white-faced,
uncomprehendingly, as he slowly turned to face them squarely, his
eye fairly glittering with inner lights of its own. Then--without
warning--he uttered a few unintelligible words, groaned, and fell on
his face.
"Quick!" said Uncle Andy. "The gun!" He ran, himself, to pluck it out
of Scarface's nerveless fingers.
"But what happened!" exclaimed Valerie. "Is he dead?" She and Peggy did
not follow Henry and Martia as they went over to look at the alien.
"Henry," whispered Martia. "What _are_ we? I know what you did!"
Henry paused to look at her. "Martia, Lady Dewitt is not really your
mother--_is_ she?"
Martia colored.
"You know there are no secrets between us," he insisted.
"No," she answered. "I am an orphan, like you."
"An orphan equipped with photographic memory and extra-sensory
perception," he said, rapidly. "Also, other things, like extended
perception in time. You have lately come to sense that your mind was
'fixed,' long ago, to keep you from using your full powers and to
prevent you from knowing who or _what_ you were, but these recent
experiences have started an awakening process--"
"Yes!" she agreed. "Henry, what--"
His eyes bored into hers, his nostrils flaring in his tense excitement.
"Shall I tell you where you were really born?" He turned his head and
looked down. "Wait! He's beginning to stir! _He_ can give us the final
answer!"
As the alien stirred, one of the tendrils on his wrist twirled a
control on the panel at his waist. Martia swayed, but Henry stood his
ground, blocking that telepathic signal and showing Martia how to do it
at the same time. But Valerie and Peggy and Uncle Andy dropped to the
floor, unconscious.
The alien rose slowly to his feet, and Henry turned, instinctively, to
get the gun that Uncle Andy had dropped. Then he and Martia, as well as
the alien, stiffened in surprise as Scarface smilingly picked up the
gun and leveled it.
"Everything is going to be all right," he said, confidently. "I think
I have all the answers now. It was not the impossible coincidence I
imagined it to be, his coming upon all three of us on board that plane.
I think that he--"
"Look out!" screamed Martia.
Out of the mirror had come an unexpected figure, hurling itself upon
Scarface's back. Scarface went down and the gun was torn from his
fingers, even as the alien reached for his controls on the instrument
panel behind him.
"No you don't!" yelled Tommy Weston.
He stood there, his clothes half torn off, supporting himself on one
good leg and painfully trying not to bring pressure to bear on the
other, which appeared to be sprained.
"I'm _still_ running the show!" he yelled, hysterically.
_Quick!_--came a thought from Scarface to the two adolescents. _Through
the teleporter!_
As they literally threw themselves into the silvery mirror in back of
them, they heard Weston firing shot after shot into the alien....
* * * * *
Back in the subterranean chamber where they had come upon their first
teleporter, Scarface reached behind the mirror and adjusted something,
whereupon the sheet of silvery substance took on a bluish sheen.
"You see, I knew all along what this was," he said. "But if I had told
you that it would probably lead you right into Mlargn's hands you would
not have dared follow. You needed one more shock to bring you out, and
I waited there for you, waiting for my final proof." He smiled. "In his
weakened condition, it was too _much_ of a shock to Mlargn. I didn't
quite expect him to pass out like that--the poor beast! Well, anyway,
Weston has taken care of him, and this adjustment will keep him from
following us."
"Wait, please!" interrupted Henry. "You're assuming too much knowledge
on our part. We--"
"Just one more detail," said Scarface, as he made a last adjustment
behind the mirror. By now it was a shimmering pink. "Follow me," he
directed. And without further explanation he stepped _back_ through the
teleporter.
Under ordinary circumstances, Henry and Martia would have reacted
emotionally to this new development, and fear would have restrained
them. But this was a very special circumstance because they had had an
awakening. A calm logic told them that Scarface would not have directed
them to follow him if it would do them any harm. One of the premises
of that logic was that they had "read" at least his attitude. He was
definitely an ally--and the ultimate answer to their mutual enigma.
So they followed him.
They found themselves in a great, domed citadel which covered the
entire top of a small island. Some miles away was a long stretch of
jungle-covered land and low hills easily recognizable as the country
where they had first camped. They could even make out the silvery
glitter of the wrecked plane.
They remembered having seen this island from the shore, but it had
looked like a flat-topped, barren rock protruding from the sea. Then it
came to them that the citadel on top was invisible from the land.
Scarface sat at the console of a tremendous instrument panel. On his
head was an elaborate headpiece equipped with silvery anodes that
clamped against his skull. His eyes were closed. His fingers made
delicate adjustments on the console while strange, almost ultra-sonic
tones emanated from a battery of glowing tubes on the wall.
Martia and Henry sensed that they were not to disturb him. So they
walked around inside the dome and looked at the sea, and the old, old
land. Their minds were awakening to new perspectives and powers, and
slowly they caught glimpses of a billion year pattern of destiny that
dazzled their thoughts. So they barred these perspectives, holding them
breathlessly at the threshold of soaring consciousness--waiting for
experienced guidance.
At length, Scarface finished his task and came over to them. "While I
am waiting for results," he said, "I will tell you what you want to
know...."
* * * * *
He told them that somewhere in the era of time in which they had been
raised, a cataclysm had occurred which had destroyed all life on Earth.
Oceans had come over the land and the whole, slow, geo-biological
process of regeneration had begun once more. Evolution through hundreds
of millions of years had at last arrived at a dominant, intelligent
species of which Mlargn, the "alien," was the last survivor.
He told them the story of Xlarn, of the cooling of the sun, of
the reaction sphere, and of the Chronotron. And he described the
developments which finally led to Mlargn's time journey in search of
life before the Beginning.
"Actually, Mlargn made two trips into Earth time. On his first trip
he must have arrived somewhere in an earlier century than the one you
knew--"
"The thirteenth century," interrupted Henry.
Scarface looked at him in wonderment. So both Henry and Martia told him
the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
For almost a minute, the other was silent. Then he said, "So that's
where the ancestors of Galactic Civilization came from...."
"Galactic Civilization!" Martia exclaimed.
Scarface grinned at them. "Yes," he said. "We call it that, because we
have inhabited at least a dozen solar systems and are still growing.
Let me continue the story...."
Mlargn had chosen a group of children because he knew they could be
trained and conditioned easier. When he returned through the Chronotron
to his own time, the Xlarnan immortals considered the human captives
to be unimaginable, short-lived, soft-skinned bipeds, but amazingly
advanced mammalia from the evolutionary viewpoint. And they could
think, in a primitive fashion. Moreover, they proved to be incredibly
fertile.
Only slightly encouraged, the Xlarnans threw them into a Chronotron
cycle of five hundred thousand years. The resultant race and alternate
time proved to be something for which they were totally unprepared.
Since the continuum between Cause and Effect was a simultaneous
structure in time, there it was, complete from beginning to end--a
superman civilization that encompassed great stretches of the
galaxy. An alien brand of intelligence. Virile resourcefulness and
aggressiveness, far outstripping the sterile civilization of Xlarn.
Astounded and frightened, the Xlarnans sought to trace the beginnings
of this alternate time, through the Chronotron, and throttle the
totally unexpected development at its source. However, this was
foreseen by the civilization which had sprung from the Chronotron--and
there was war. The Xlarnans were eliminated, except for one, who swore
vengeance.
This unsuspected immortal was he who had brought back the ancestors of
the star men from beyond Beginning, from the world where the moon was
young. This was Mlargn, himself.
* * * * *
Although the star men had abandoned the dying solar system of their
origin, it was inevitable that a few of their number should be left
behind--castaways who finally organized themselves, built a citadel of
their own, and sought to build a small star ship in which to escape the
threat of the reaction sphere. But the specialized science that had
developed the hyper-space drive eluded them and they struggled in vain,
while Mlargn besieged them, jealously endeavoring to discover what they
were accomplishing. He applied his warfare so vigorously that one day
only Kimnar was left, with two youngsters. In fact, they were babes.
In desperation, Kimnar gained access to the Chronotron. Hoping to
create another alternate time, he hurled himself and the two children
into further depths of time than he intended.
And Mlargn followed him. Aware of his own immortality and equipped
with controls that could reverse his course in time because they were
interlocked with the Chronotron, he was determined to spend centuries,
if necessary, to find those two advanced children and use them to his
own advantage....
* * * * *
Henry shook his head to clear it. "Just a moment," he said. "I might
extrapolate from all this that you are Kimnar."
"I am," smiled Scarface. "I arrived with you two in the human era, in
Earth's calendar year nineteen hundred forty-four A.D., on June 6th,
to be exact. The country was France. The place--Caen...."
There was a stunned moment of silence. Then Martia's eyes widened. "But
that was--!"
"Yes," said Kimnar, smiling grimly. "The Allied invasion of Normandie.
I landed right in the middle of D-Day."
"What happened?" asked Henry. "I mean--to you?"
"I was injured by shrapnel. That's how I acquired the scar on my face.
I woke up later in a hospital and have been looking for you two ever
since."
"Kimnar," said Henry, "are Martia and I sister and brother?"
Martia's mind leaped out to find the answer in Kimnar's thoughts before
he could speak. "No!" she cried, happily. "We're not!" Henry suddenly
found her in his arms.
"She's right," Kimnar confirmed.
"You two were survivors of Mlargn's attack in those days when Jirahn
was alive--but you were not of the same family."
"Who was Jirahn?"
Kimnar waved a hand toward the great instrument panel. "It was he who
invented that hyper-space transceiver. Or rather, he re-invented it,
remembering much of the science of our kin, the star men. Just before
Mlargn's powerful attack, in which he utilized a deadly radiation
that killed everybody in the citadel, I believe Jirahn succeeded in
contacting the star men. But I could not be certain, as I had been
away from the citadel when the attack came. Upon my return, I found
my friends dead, and Jirahn sat slumped over those controls with the
head gear attached to him. Certain lights were signalling to me from
the board, but I could not decipher them. Moreover, I feared that
Mlargn would find the right teleporter frequency to tie his system in
with ours, and that he might surprise me at any time. So I removed the
bodies, dumping them into the sea, and prepared, generally, to 'abandon
ship.' Just as I was about to leave, I found you two halfway down the
cliffs on a covered terrace that your parents had been in the habit
of using. They had left you there for your naps. It was then that I
conceived the idea of finding the Chronotron and trying to create a new
alternate time based on your descendants."
"But Kimnar," persisted Henry. "What about that transceiver? You worked
it when we first arrived here, and I remember you mentioned something
about 'waiting for results.'"
Kimnar shrugged. "I tried the thing, and to the best of my knowledge I
was transmitting through hyper-space at full power. So far, there has
been no response. I have the receiver wide open."
"Do you mean--it is conceivable that some of the star people might
return for us?"
Kimnar smiled in a puzzling sort of way. "I tossed them the bait," he
said. "I think they'll consider the risk worth while--if they received
my message."
"What risk is there now? I'm quite sure Weston finished Mlargn off."
* * * * *
Kimnar raised his eyes heavenward. "Remember? The reaction sphere could
go any time. Fortunately, most of the harder radiations are expending
themselves convexly, into outer space, and what is shooting towards us
still has many miles to travel. But it's getting very unhealthy around
here. When the sphere blows, it will take the Great Ring with it--the
ring that used to be the moon."
Simultaneously, Henry and Martia thought of something else. The other
passengers, their original companions. What of them--and Weston, with
his gun?
"We can't leave them here to die," said Henry. "What about the
Chronotron? Can't we send them all back?"
Kimnar shook his head. "The Chronotron is not that accurate at such
long range. Only a few people at a time can go through, and they
might land anywhere, from Earth's prehistoric ages to Xlarn's eras of
development ante-dating the generation of an oxygen content atmosphere.
Moreover, Mlargn changed the location of the Chronotron. I have not
been able to find it. That was what I originally went back to look for
when I left you on the beach after that fight with Weston."
"Wait a minute!" cried Martia. "But my moth--I mean, Lady Dewitt and
those others found it!"
Kimnar looked at both of them wonderingly. Briefly, they told him about
the alternate time episode involving New Bretania and Texania, which
Mlargn successfully nipped in the bud.
"I must have been underground somewhere at the time," said Kimnar,
"traveling through various teleporters. Otherwise, had I been on the
surface, I have enough temporal perspective, myself, to have been able
to remember that alternate time experience." He frowned. "If Weston
ever finds the Chronotron--"
"Well, why not?" asked Martia. "You couldn't blame them for going
back--or trying to!"
"I see what he means," said Henry. "If any of them should go back
to the approximate time from which we started and do anything to
circumvent that moon experiment--"
"_What_ moon experiment?" asked Martia.
"I forgot to tell you, I guess. Kimnar knew because he read it in
Uncle Andy's mind. Uncle Andy as Andrew Dearden, is one of the world's
greatest rocket specialists. He was just returning from Africa on that
plane after having supervised all preparations for firing a rocket at
the moon."
"That _is_ amazing," said Martia, "but--oh!" She read the rest in
Henry's mind. The rocket carried the world's first D-C bomb, which
letters represented the word, "de-cohesion." In detonation, the bomb
was supposed to liberate the cohesive forces of the proton. They were
going to observe its effects on the moon.
"I believe," said Henry, "that it produced a sustained reaction in
stable matter, and the moon blew to fragments, thus creating the Great
Ring. The thermal effects plus orbital perturbations of the Earth
destroyed all life on the planet. And I deduce that the free oxygen and
hydrogen in our atmosphere made some kind of critical mixture and went
_foom_! The result was H_{2}O, oceans of it. And so time began again,
biologically speaking, anyway."
"If Andrew Dearden or any of his kind get back there and manage to
abolish the 'D-C' bomb," said Kimnar, "then Xlarn will never have
been, and neither you nor I nor Galactic Civilization, with its myriad
worlds and metropoli and billions of star people and all their science
and culture, shall have ever evolved. And there you have a difficult
question. Is it better for us to relinquish our existence for the sake
of a civilization that might have continued, or to preserve a greater
one that actually exists _now_?"
* * * * *
Before they could bring much concentration to bear upon this weighty
problem, a new situation diverted their attention. Inasmuch as the
three of them were standing by the transparent wall of the citadel and
facing shoreward, they could not help seeing the small industrial city
that suddenly sprang into being there. Again, up on the hill, was a
great black rocket, its nose pointing toward the threatening sky.
But this was not New Bretania. Nor was it Texania. Nor was there the
slightest evidence of any type of conflict or preparations for defense,
except in the design of the rocket, itself.
"That's a different alternate!" said Henry, instantly. "The city is
different--more heavily industrialized. See the steel mills? It's even
futuristic. Those insulator towers and antenna, for some kind of power
transmission--"
"And that rocket is different--more efficient looking," observed
Martia. "It seems to carry armament. You can see the firing cupolas."
"You're both very calm about it," said Kimnar. "Somebody has found the
Chronotron. Come on!"
A moment after they had stepped through the teleporter, leaving the
island citadel deserted, the hyper-space receiver began to react to
signals. Lights flickered rapidly for several minutes. Then a human
voice boomed into the empty dome. It spoke in a strange language,
rapidly, urgently. But there was no operator there to reply....
When Kimnar, Henry and Martia stepped through the teleporter, they
arrived in the circular room they had first visited in the subterranean
world of Xlarn.
"There's somebody down here," said Henry.
"They're in that room with the vision screens," added Martia.
Kimnar frowned. "You're right, and I sense that one of them is Weston.
Let's have a closer look!"
But already, it seemed, detectors had discovered their presence. In
three seconds they heard running footsteps and they saw the tell-tale
progression of light advancing toward them along the curved passageway.
Two men came into view, to be followed by a man on crutches who
shouldered his way in between them.
"Weston!" exclaimed Martia.
"Dr. Edwards!" Henry cried out. Edwards was the man with the gun--the
same gun that Kimnar had used against Mlargn.
The other member of the trio was the Indian Prince, his precious turban
now much disheveled and awry.
"Aha!" cried Weston, grinning and leaning on his crutches with a
derisive air. "So the wanderers have returned!"
* * * * *
The Indian Prince ran forward and kneeled before Henry, wringing his
hands in supplication. In his fat, brown face and his wide, brown eyes
was registered an expression of terror and desperation.
"Henry!" he exclaimed. "Only you can give me the answer--it is all so
mixed up that I cannot understand. Only you can tell me if it's true!"
"If _what_ is true?" asked Kimnar.
"Shut up, Mohammed!" yelled Weston. "Edwards knows what he's doing!
Tell them, Edwards!--before you plug 'em!"
Since Edwards held the gun, he took time to explain. In his eyes was a
wild sort of triumph.
"I don't know where you three have been," he said, "but in your
absence a great deal has happened. Since young Henry, here, has always
exhibited his great intelligence so willingly, perhaps he would
corroborate my own deductions--by doing some fast extrapolating!" He
said this last word through his teeth. There was a smile on his lips,
but not in his dark and wearied eyes.
As he went on rapidly with his story, his three listeners were scanning
his mind for the rest of it, putting the whole picture together even
before he had finished.
When Weston killed Mlargn, he managed to manipulate controls that
finally released all the others from their mental paralysis. He made
Lady Dewitt and the Texans show him the location of the Chronotron, and
under directions from the various scientists at his command a series
of experiments was conducted. Various power settings were utilized,
and test groups volunteered or were assigned to be sent back through
time. Some, they knew, might arrive in a place where conditions would
not be suitable for life. Others might perish in a world populated
by carnivorous monsters, or they might freeze, or drown in shoreless
oceans. But most of them seemed willing to risk it.
It was Uncle Andy's group that produced the alternate time that the
three had witnessed from the citadel. This group had consisted of Andy,
Dr. Bauml, Dr. Singer, Valerie Roagland, Peggy Hollenbeck, and several
other men and women. Pee Bee, it developed, had been in the first
"group," which had consisted only of himself--as he had apparently
been in a suicidal mood and was desirous of giving the dice a roll for
double or nothing.
Andy's group, it appeared, had only been thrown back about a thousand
years, because the "civilization" they founded was small and still
dedicated to the same goals which had been in the minds of the basic
group when they entered the Chronotron. These descendants remembered
their ancestors and carried some of their theories to the point of
physical application.
* * * * *
In the meantime, only Weston, Edwards and the Prince remained below.
The alternate time civilization, which referred to itself as "Little
America," had appropriated the Xlarnan underworld facilities for
itself, and the three observers had found it necessary to conceal
themselves. To their dismay, the "Little Americans" had destroyed the
Chronotron in order to make certain that none of their group would ever
be tempted to snuff them out with a superimposed alternate.
Far from abandoning the idea of returning to the world and time of
their ancestors' origin they had concentrated on time-travel theories
of their own, with the intention of evolving a more accurate method so
that they could be sure of where they were going.
"You said something to me and your Uncle Andy on board the plane before
all this happened," Edwards remarked to Henry. "Something about novae
and super fast light rays being thrown along the Fourth Coordinate.
That must have started them on the road to their present discoveries
and development, because there's a ship out there now that only uses
rockets for take-off and navigational purposes. Once out in deep space
it is supposed to operate on Cosmic energy, or so we have heard. It
will go out faster than light. The idea is that when that happens it
will be rotated out of three dimensional space and be forced to expend
its extra velocity along the Fourth Coordinate, emerging in another
time when it again slows down to the speed of light. But this isn't
all. These scientists have worked out some new kind of mathematics
and seem convinced they have been able to determine the direction and
the rates of acceleration and deceleration necessary to deliver them
into any given era of time, past or future. And their flight equation
calls for the time we came from. Of course, they'll not hit it in the
first attempt, but all subsequent time-jumps will be like vernier
adjustments, focussing them down into the twentieth century--even that
specific part of it they're aiming for."
"You can't let them do it!" exclaimed Kimnar. Weston, Edwards and the
Prince stared at him in mild astonishment.
"I don't know what your objections may be, Scarface," said Edwards,
"but as a matter of fact we _don't_ intend to let them get away with
it!"
Weston grinned sadistically, his gold-capped teeth glistening. "You
see--_we_ are going instead! Of course we'll cop their pilot, and he'll
do what we tell him. And here's another little point. I'm not so sharp
with the science, so Edwards will tell you that, too. Tell them about
Africa, Doc!"
* * * * *
The three listeners tensed. They saw it coming. The "Little Americans"
were well aware of Andy's connection with the D-C bomb. Andy, too, had
been able to deduce, largely from the lack of ocean tides in this world
of Xlarn, that it could have been the bomb that had brought the world
of Xlarn into being by the destruction of the moon. The most sacred
admonishment to his descendants in alternate time had been to find
a way of getting back to the twentieth century and prevent the bomb
from being launched. That single act would enable the original Earth
civilization to continue, and Xlarn would cease to exist.
"It's all a nice, neat package," said Weston, "because don't forget I
worked that French Morocco project, too, and I know how to sabotage
that damned rocket! Then to make the whole story turn out real pretty
with a happy ending, we have Mohammed here to pay off like he said, for
getting him back home!"
The Prince still looked at Henry, his turban almost down over his eyes.
"You have heard!" he cried out. "Tell me, Henry! Can it be done?"
"There's just one little technicality," said Henry. "How do you propose
to capture that Cosmic drive rocket outside?"
Weston grinned again, and Dr. Edwards explained. "Our friends upstairs
never suspected our existence. They probably assumed we got lost
somewhere in the Chronotron. Having had no one to defend themselves
against, they have produced no weapons of any description, with the
exception of those they have installed on the rocket, for use when they
get back to the twentieth century, if necessary, to force the issue
concerning the D-C bomb. So they are quite vulnerable to a surprise
attack. This gun should do the trick easily enough. It is fully loaded."
"What of their superior numbers?" asked Kimnar. But he read the answer
before it was voiced.
"The poor devils were quite aware of the reaction sphere," Edwards
answered. "There isn't much time left, you know. They chose their
pilgrims, and the rest--"
Martia paled. "All dead!" she exclaimed.
Edwards shrugged. "Euthanasia. Tragic, perhaps, but very convenient.
We only have six men to contend with."
"I don't want to appear too forward about all this," said Kimnar,
slipping back into the sarcastic dialect of Scarface, "but we'd like to
ride in that star buggy, ourselves. Maybe you can use another hand in
your surprise attack?"
Henry and Martia looked at him quizzically, then their brows furrowed
in deeper puzzlement as they read the weighty thing that was in his
mind.
"To hell with you," yelled Weston. "I owe you something for that lousy
deal you gave me on the rock. On second thought, maybe a bullet would
be too easy. Maybe you should wait and see the sky blow up. You and the
kids wouldn't want to miss all the pretty fireworks, now would you?"
The Prince sprang into action. Swiftly, he took up a position in front
of Henry, Martia and Kimnar. Trembling, and with arms outspread,
he cried out, "If you leave them, you can leave me, too! Shoot
me--anything! But Henry and his friends are sacred! They go, or I stay!"
Dr. Edwards grimaced, looked at his gun, then at Weston. The latter
glowered at the Prince, menacingly.
Finally, he muttered an oath that made Martia's face turn crimson. And
he added, "What's the difference! We'll take you as excess baggage, but
on condition you'll follow orders. Edwards here is going to be awful
nervous on that trigger, so don't try anything."
* * * * *
The surface world was very warm and the sky was sickeningly bright.
Vegetation drooped, dried up, dead or dying, and the plant stench of
rot was in the degenerating air. In the mind of every sweating human
left on Xlarn was one thought:
_It can happen any second now...._
Driven by the deadly threat of the sky, Weston and Edwards did not
waste time on strategy. They approached the rocket base directly, out
in the open, in the glaring light. The pilot and one other man was
inside. Four others met them, in mild astonishment, but there was very
little time for conversation.
When Weston let them know his intention, and when they looked at Dr.
Edwards' gun, they smiled, resignedly.
"What is life or death to us now?" said the spokesman, a somewhat older
man than the others. "The main consideration is our common purpose.
You, too, want to stop the _bomb_. And if Doctor Edwards here is, as
you say, a prominent authority known to that time, his influence would
be greater than ours. As long as you intend to take Kennedy, the pilot,
our efforts and sacrifices shall not have been in vain. Go--before it
is too late!"
Once at the ladder Weston threw the crutches away and practically
pulled himself up to the airlock with his powerful arms. Edwards
followed close behind with his gun, and then came Martia, Henry and
Kimnar, who gave the Prince a helping hand as he climbed.
The four on the ground watched silently for five minutes.
Then they saw their colleague, Mark Thixton, climb down out of the
rocket. That left Kennedy alone--with those others.
Thixton walked over to his waiting friends. "Seven of them," he said.
"The two youngsters will have to share an acceleration sling together."
After a long moment he added, "Pray God they make it in time!"
The others said nothing. They only hoped Kennedy would take off fast
enough to get through that raving pile in the sky. The radiation
insulation was excellent in that ship, but they still wondered if
escape would be possible.
_It can happen any second now...._
* * * * *
When Martia pulled out of the blackness that she had fallen into during
acceleration, she began to cry. Henry could read the thought in her
mind. Those brave, kind men back there--left to die.
Then came a disturbing thought from Kimnar who lay in the sling above
them: _You realize that we are through the reaction sphere. If they
succeed in their purpose, you and I cease to exist. But what really
matters is Galactic Civilization! That, too, will evaporate and be
non-existent!_
Henry and Martia were too weak to think back at him. But they thought
to themselves. Earth, as they had known it, with its teeming billions
of people and its cities and sciences and cultures.
_And its wars and nationalisms and ideologies and greed and
corruption!_--interposed Kimnar's thought, vehemently.
But its beaches under the blue skies and a real, normal sun, with the
children bathing and laughing, and its theatres and arts, its churches
and universities and--Paris! Think of Paris! If they could stop the
bomb, all that would continue to be--
_I can show you six thousand cities greater than Paris! And if you
consider Earth, then think of solar systems--dozens of worlds greater
than Earth--more advanced, benevolent, civilized, where men cannot lie
and cheat because they know each other's hearts and minds! Weigh all
that against one world!_
_No_--thought Henry, at last. _Consider Earth's own future expansion,
if saved from cataclysm. Think of its own possibilities of reaching for
the stars and also establishing a Galactic Civilization!_
Kimnar did not respond.
* * * * *
Suddenly, Kennedy came out of his straps and yelled. He was looking out
the great vision port, from which the radiation shielding had been
removed. Everybody sat up and stared into outer space.
In the lower part of their field vision was the Great Ring that had
once been the moon, and below it was the glowing reaction sphere that
covered Xlarn. It looked like an incandescent Saturn, with the mighty
star-walls of Infinity rising behind it. But even this tremendous
spectacle was insignificant in its effect when compared with ten other
prominent objects out there.
"Space ships!" shouted Weston. "Where the hell--"
Ten great spheres, with rods at top and bottom and thick rings around
their "equators," as though they were space-flying gyroscopes. They
were converging slowly upon the rocket.
"Shall I tell you what they are?" asked Kimnar enthusiastically. "They
are in the hands of Fate!"
"If you know what they are, don't get corny, Scarface!" roared Weston,
climbing out of his sling and grabbing the gun from Edwards. "Spill it!"
Calmly but swiftly, Kimnar told the story, and he explained the issue
that hung in the balance--Earth's alternate future against this already
existing Galactic Civilization.
"Here and now," he concluded, "Fate can decide. Perhaps it is not in
our own hands, after all."
Dr. Edwards stared at him aghast, the whole explanation of Henry's and
Martia's precociousness striking him at last. Then he looked again at
the approaching spheres.
"Do they know what we represent?" he asked.
"Yes," smiled Kimnar. "I communicated the message to them some time
ago. I thought I was lying to them then, or doing some wishful
thinking, merely to make them come for us--but now it's no longer a
lie. You _can_ stop that moon bomb and strike a new alternate across a
billion years of space and time! But if you do, I and my friends and a
Galactic Civilization will cease to exist!"
* * * * *
All this time, the pilot, Kennedy, had been like a man coming out of
anesthesia. He was a tall, gaunt young fellow with heavy, forward
jutting brows and far seeing eyes. His long chin was way out as he
watched everything and listened, with his wiry right hand lying inertly
beside the simple bank of the ship's main controls.
"Kennedy!" yelled Weston. "What kind of guns are in those blisters?"
The pilot stared at him. "They fire one pound projectiles--nuclear
bombs."
"_That_ is for me! Come on, Edwards! To your station!" Before anyone
could stop him, he was swinging lightly away, from support to support,
under the gravity free condition of free fall.
"Better strap in tight!" called Kennedy, coming to life at last. "If
I'm going to maneuver out here, you're going to feel some Gs!"
"Let's go!" they heard Weston reply, from his blister. And Edwards was
already on his way to the other position.
Grimly, the pilot shifted into emergency flight position and strapped
himself in, while Kimnar and Henry and Martia watched him. They heard
the Indian Prince stuttering through his prayers again.
"Kennedy," said Kimnar, half rising in his sling. "Don't do it!"
"You better stay strapped," replied the other. Even as he spoke, a
great weight pressed upon them and the firmament outside began to
revolve, sweeping Xlarn and the star ships momentarily out of sight.
"Kennedy!" persisted Kimnar, doggedly, in spite of the mounting
pressure "Think this over! One world--Earth--cannot be worth twelve
civilized solar systems! Let me contact those star men for you! You
could continue to live--"
Everybody came close to blacking out as the rocket swept down over
the row of globular ships and shook with recoil from Weston's and
Edward's firing. A horrifying scene of exploding spheres swept by
the observation panels, and Martia screamed in her mixed despair.
Kimnar sweated profusely. Henry tensed his mind, preparing to paralyze
Kennedy. It was an irresistible impulse, not quite tied to logic.
_No!_--came Kimnar's thought to him. _I have decided against that kind
of coercion. There's something bigger out here than we. Call it Fate,
if you will. And that power alone will have to decide! We can only
propose!_
* * * * *
It was in that moment that Fate cut the cord. An eye-searing light
filled the cabin, and Kennedy shrieked--"The reaction sphere!"
The planet once known as Earth burst into a minor nova, blasting its
Great Ring into spiraling shreds and tatters of celestial tinsel. In
the face of that swiftly advancing flame, the star ships that had
survived the rocket's first onslaught flicked safely into hyper-space,
and Kennedy _tried_ to stand enough Gs of acceleration to keep ahead of
it. He barely made it.
But Weston and Edwards did not. At first they were blinded, utterly, by
the blast, unprotected as they were in the blisters. Then, as a very
small fraction of that searing wave licked out at the rocket, the hull
resisted but the blisters fused and exploded. An airlock sealed the gun
compartments off from the rocket's cabin, but the remains of the two
gunners drifted into the turbulent ether.
There was one other decisive effect of the holocaust. Certain delicate
apparatus connected with the collection and storing of Cosmic energy
was also fused and made useless, before it had hardly begun to store up
for the intended work ahead.
"That does it!" panted Kennedy. "We're licked!"
"No we're not," said Kimnar, nodding toward the observation panel.
His tear-flooded eyes were struggling out of the momentarily induced
blindness and he saw that the rocket had turned so that the glare of
the explosion was not visible.
Instead, there was the towering, eternal firmament, and in it had
suddenly materialized one of the star man spheres, glistening brightly
in the light that their eyes were now being spared. Kennedy watched it
helplessly as it approached.
Henry and Martia became aware of minds probing them gingerly and
communing with Kimnar--minds of the star men, who had not struck back
immediately because they had been hoping to rescue some of their own
kind and take them home....
* * * * *
_While a bewildered but grateful man named Kennedy and a wide-eyed
Indian Prince followed Kimnar, Henry and Martia into a scintillating
civilization in far off space and time, a secret rocket experiment was
being concluded in French Morocco. In the nose of the rocket was a D-C
bomb, which was to be detonated on the surface of the moon._
_No one who had entered the Chronotron, at Weston's insistence, had
succeeded in reaching the twentieth century and altering the future by
a hair. But Pee Bee had shot far behind the line, landing somewhere
in the 8th century B.C. No change in original Cause can ever fail to
precipitate an equal degree of change in final Effect. Yet the world
that existed between the 8th century B.C. and the twentieth century
A.D. was not greatly shaken by having a few lines of print changed here
and there in various histories, reference books and encyclopedias. It
seemed that there never had been such a word as billiards. There was an
ancient game known as pool (Egypt.--puul), the origin of which was not
England, but in the glorious imperial days of Ethiopia, when Egypt was
one of its provinces and a famous emperor referred to later by Roman
historians as Pibeus, invented it to amuse his harem of two hundred
wives...._