EDDINGTON'S OSCILLATIONS
Horror and sick revulsion came into me as I stared down at the great
wasps, with their many-faceted eyes seeming to probe the Jovian mists
through a solid metal bulkhead!
They thought we were Jovian caterpillars! Evidently there were flabby,
white larva-shapes out in the mist as large as men--with the habit
perhaps of rearing upright on stumpy legs like terrestrial measuring
worms. We looked enough like Jovian caterpillars to deceive those
Jovian wasps.
They had apparently seen us through the walls of the ship, and their
egg-laying instincts had gone awry. They had plunged ovipositors into
our flesh, spun webs about us and hung us up to dry out while their
loathsome progeny feasted on our flesh.
The whitish substance exuding from the mouth-parts of one of the
photographed wasps had evidently been mucilaginous web material.
There was no other possible explanation. And suddenly as I lay there
with thudding temples something occurred which increased my horror
ten-fold.
Zigzagging, luminous lines appeared on the ribbed metal wall opposite
the quartz port and a wasp materialized amidst spectral bands of
radiance which wavered and shimmered like heat waves in bright sunlight.
A coldness itched across my scalp. Dangling from the wasp's right
fore-leg was the web-enmeshed form of the fuel unit control pilot.
Young Darnel's hair was tousled, and his metacloth pilot tunic had been
partly torn away, leaving his ribs exposed.
I had never seen anything quite so horrible. Embedded in Darnel's
flesh was a huge, faintly luminous grub, its rudimentary mouth-parts
obscurely visible beneath the drum-tight skin over his breastbone.
His hands closed and unclosed as I stared down at him. His forehead was
drenched with sweat and he writhed as though in unbearable anguish, a
hectic flush suffusing his cheeks.
My throat felt hot and swollen but I managed to whisper: "Darnel.
Darnel, my lad."
Slowly his eyelids flickered open and he stared up at me, a grimace of
agony convulsing his haggard features.
"Nothing seems quite real, sir," he groaned. "Except--the pain."
"Is it very bad?"
"I'm in agony, sir. I can't stand it much longer. It's as though a
heated iron were resting on my chest."
"Where did that wasp take you?"
"Into the chart room, sir. When I struggled in the web it carried me
into the chart room and stung me again."
I swallowed hard. "Did you experience any pain before that, lad?"
"I felt a stab the first time it plunged its stinger into me, but when
I came to in the web there was no pain. The pain started in the chart
room."
I was thinking furiously. Stinger--ovipositor. A few species of
stinging terrestrial insects possessed organs which combined the
functions of both. Evidently the wasps had simply stung us at
first--to paralyze us. Now they were completing the gruesome process of
providing a feast for their avaricious progeny. One of the wasps had
taken Darnel from the web, and deposited a fertile, luminous egg in his
flesh.
It was becoming hideously clear now. The wasp's retreat into the chart
room had been motivated by a desire to complete its loathsome task
in grim seclusion. It had withdrawn a short distance for the sake of
privacy, passing completely through the wall out of sight.
My stomach felt tight and hollow when I contemplated the grub, which
had apparently hatched out almost instantly. It seemed probable that
Darnel's anguish was caused by the grub's luminosity searing his flesh,
as its mouth-parts were still immobile.
"Darnel," I whispered. "The paralysis wore off. They couldn't sting us
into permanent insensibility. The pain may go too."
He looked at me, his eyes filming. "I don't understand, sir. Paralysis?"
I had forgotten that Darnel wasn't even aware of what we were
up against. He couldn't see the grub. He didn't know that we
were--caterpillars.
He was in torment, and I was powerless to help him. I was glad he
didn't know, despite my certain knowledge that I was about to share his
fate. I whispered hoarsely: "Can you see Joan, lad. Is she--"
"She's lying in the web next to you, sir. Dawson and Stillmen have been
out."
"_Taken out._"
"There are two empty webs, sir. Oh, God, the pain--I can't stand it."
The great wasp was moving now. It was moving slowly across the chamber
toward the quartz port, between its motionless companions. Its wings
were vibrating and it was raising Darnel up as though it were about to
hurl him out through the inches-thick quartz into the mist.
Suddenly as I stared the utter strangeness of something that had
already occurred smote me with the force of a physical blow. The wasp
had carried Darnel _right through the wall_--from the pilot chamber to
the chart room, and back again.
Apparently the great wasps could make us tenuous too! Close and
prolonged contact with the energies pouring from them had made Darnel's
body as permeable as gamma light. Horribly it was borne in on me that
Darnel's anguish was caused by a _pervasive_ glow which enveloped him
from head to foot. It was fainter than the radiance which poured from
the wasps and was almost invisible in the fluorescent cube-light, but I
could see it now.
The wasp didn't hurl Darnel out. It simply vanished with him through
the quartz port, its wings dwindling to a luminous blur which hovered
for an instant before the inches-thick crystal before it dwindled into
nothingness.
The same instant a voice beside me moaned. "Richard, I can't move."
"Joan," I gasped. "Oh, my dearest--"
"Richard, I can't move. I'm in a sort of web, Richard. It's--it's like
a mist before my eyes."
I knew then that Joan was trussed up on her side, gazing through her
web directly at me. I was glad that she couldn't see the wasps.
"Joan."
"Yes, Richard."
"Did you just wake up?"
"Wake up? You mean I've been dreaming, Richard. Those wasps--"
"Darling, do you want it straight?"
"You don't need to ask that, Richard."
I told her then--everything I suspected, everything I _knew_. When I
stopped speaking, she was silent for ten full seconds. Then her voice
came to me vibrant with courage.
"We can't live forever, Richard."
"That's what I've been thinking, darling. And you've got to admit
we've had the best of everything."
"Some people I know would call it living," she said.
"Darling?"
"Yes, Richard."
"I've a confession to make. I've liked being out in space with you.
I've liked the uncertainty, the danger--the desperate chances we both
took with our lives."
"I'm glad, Richard."
"I don't glow outwardly--you know that. You've had a lot to contend
with. I've reproached you, and tried to put a damper on your
enthusiasm, and--"
"You've been a wonderful husband, Richard."
"But as a lover--"
"Richard, do you remember what you said to me when we were roaring
through the red skies above Io? You held my fingers so tightly I was
afraid you'd break them, and your kisses were as fiery as a girl could
ask for. And you said I reminded you of someone you'd always loved, and
that was why you'd married me.
"And when I scowled and asked her name you said she had no name and had
never existed on Earth. But that I had her eyes and hair and thoughts,
and was just as slim, and that when I walked I reminded you of her, and
even when I just sat on the pilot dais staring out into space.
"I knew then that you had always been in love with love, and that means
everything to a woman."
"I didn't do so badly then?"
"Richard, you've never done badly at any time. Do you think I could
love a man who was all flattery and blather?"
"I've always loved you, Joan."
"I know, Richard my darling."
"If only it didn't have to end."
"It will be over swiftly, dearest. They'll take us out into the mist
and into one of their nests, but we'll be beyond pain ten seconds after
the atmosphere enters our lungs. Darnel and Dawson are at peace now."
"But we could have gone on, and--" I broke off in stunned bewilderment.
The vibrating wings of the wasps beneath me seemed to be casting less
massive shadows on the walls of the pilot chamber. The wasps themselves
seemed to be--
My heart gave a sudden, violent leap. For perhaps ten seconds utter
incredulity enveloped me. Unmistakably the wasps had grown smaller,
dimmer.
Even as I stared they continued to dwindle, shedding their awesome
contours and becoming no larger than ourselves.
"Good God!" I exclaimed.
"Richard, what is it?"
"The wasps, Joan. They're getting smaller!"
"Richard, you're either stark, raving mad, or your vision is swimming
from the strain of watching them."
"No, Joan. I'm quite sane, and my eyes are all right. I tell you,
they're shrinking."
"Richard, how _could_ they shrink?"
"I--I don't know. Perhaps--wait a minute, Joan. _Eddington's
oscillations._"
"Eddington's _what_?"
"Oscillations," I exclaimed, excitedly. "A century ago Eddington
pictured all matter throughout the universe as alternating between a
state of contraction and expansion. Oh, Joan, don't you see? These
creatures are composed not of solid matter, but of some form of
vibrating energy. They possess an oscillatory life cycle which makes
them contract and expand in small-scale duplication of the larger pulse
of our contracting and expanding universe. They become huge, then
small, then huge again. They may expand and contract a thousand times
before they die. Perhaps they--"
A scream from Joan cut my explanation short. "Richard, the web's
slackening. I'm going to fall."
Fifteen minutes later we were rocketing upward through Jupiter's
immense cloud blanket, locked in each other's arms.
Joan was sobbing. "It's unbelievable, Richard. We were saved by--by a
miracle."
"No, Joan--Eddington's oscillations. Although I'll admit it seemed like
a miracle when those tiny wasps became frightened by enormous _us_
descending upon them, and flew straight through the quartz port into
the mist."
"What do you suppose made the web slacken?"
"Well," I said. "That web was spun out of the bodies of those dwindling
wasps. It seems to have been a sort of energy web, since it shriveled
to a few charred fibers before we could pluck it from our tunics.
Apparently it was sustained by energies emanating from the wasps which
burned out the instant the wasps dwindled."
"Richard, hold me close. I thought we would never see Earth again."
"I'm not sure that we will," I warned her. "We've lost our crew and we
can't even set our course by the stars. Perhaps the direction gauges
will function again when the atomotors carry us beyond Jupiter's orbit,
but I wouldn't bank on it."
"Oh, Richard, how could you? You said you liked uncertainty, danger.
You said--"
"Never mind what I said. I'm just being realistic, that's all. Do you
realize how heavily the cards are stacked against us?"
"No, and I don't particularly care. Kiss me, Richard."
Grumblingly I obeyed. It would have been better if we could have saved
our energies for the grim ordeal ahead of us, but it was impossible to
reason with Joan when she was in one of her reckless moods.