XI

Buck Kendall entered the Communications room rather furtively. He hated

the place. Cole was there, and McLaurin. Mac was looking tired and

drawn, Cole not so tired, but equally drawn. The signals were coming

through fairly well, because most of the disturbance was rising where

the signals rose, and all the disturbance, practically, was magnetic

rather than electric.

"Deenmor is sending, Buck," McLaurin said as he entered. "They're down

to the last fifty-five tons. They'll have more time now--a rest while

Phobos sinks. Mars Center has another 250 tons, but--it's just a

question of time. Have you any hope to offer?"

"No," said Kendall in a strained voice. "But, Mac, I don't think men

like those are afraid to die. It's dying uselessly they fear. Tell

'em--tell 'em they've defended not alone Mars, but all the system, in

holding up the Strangers on Mars. We here on Luna have been safer

because of them. And tell--Mac, tell them that in the meantime, while

they defended us, and gave us time to work, we have begun to see the

trail that will lead to victory."

"_You have!_" gasped McLaurin.

"No--but they will never know!" Kendall left hastily. He went and stood

moodily looking at the calculator machines--the calculator machines that

refused to give the answers he sought. No matter how he might modify

that original idea of his, no matter what different line of attack he

might try in solving the problems of Space and Matter, while he used the

system he _knew_ was right--the answer came down to that deadly,

hope-blasting expression that meant only "uncertain."

Even Buck was beginning to feel uncertain under that constant crushing

of hope. Uncertainty--uncertainty was eating into him, and destroying--

From the Communications room came the hum and drive of the great sender

flashing its message across seventy-two millions of miles of nothing.

"B-u-c-k K-e-n-d-a-l-l s-a-y-s h-e h-a-s l-e-a-r-n-e-d s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g

t-h-a-t w-i-l-l l-e-a-d t-o v-i-c-t-o-r-y w-h-i-l-e y-o-u h-e-l-d

b-a-c-k t-h-e--"

Kendall switched on a noisy, humming fan viciously. The too-intelligible

signals were drowned in its sound.

"And--tell them to--destroy the apparatus before the last of the power

is gone," McLaurin ordered softly.

The men in Deenmor station did slightly better than that. Gradually they

cut down their magnetic shield, and some of the magnetic bombs tore and

twisted viciously at the heavy metal walls. The thin atmosphere of Mars

leaked in. Grimly the men waited. Atomic bombs--or ships to investigate?

It did not matter much to them personally--

Gresth Gkae smiled with his old vigor as he ordered one of the great

interstellar ships to land beside the powerless station, approaching

from such an angle that the still-active Mars Center station could not

attack. One of the fleet of Phobos rose, and circled about the planet,

and settled gracefully beside the station. For half an hour it lay there

quietly, waiting and watching. Then a crew of two dozen Mirans started

across the dry, crumbly powder of Mars' sands, toward the fort.

Simultaneously almost, three things happened. A three-foot UV beam wiped

out the advancing party. A pair of fifteen-foot beams cut a great gaping

hole in the wall of the interstellar ship, as it darted up, like a

startled quail, its weapons roaring defiance, only to fall back,

severely wounded.

And the radio messages pounded out to Earth the first description of the

Miran people. Methodically the men in Deenmor station used all but one

ton of their power to completely and forever wreck and destroy the

interstellar cripple that floundered for a few moments on the sands a

bare mile away. Presently, before Deenmor was through with it, the

atomic bombs stopped coming, and the atomic shells. The magnetic shield

that had been re-established for the few minutes of this last, dying

sting, fell.

Deenmor station vanished in a sudden, colossal tongue of blue-green

light as the ton of atomically distorted mercury was exploded by a

projector beam turned on the tank.

* * * * *

It was long gone, when the first atomic bombs and magnetic bombs dropped

from Phobos reached the spot, and only hot rock and broken metal

remained.

Mars Center failed in fact the next time Phobos rode high over it. The

apparatus here had been carefully destroyed by technicians with a view

of making it indecipherable, but the Mirans made it even more certain,

for no ship settled here to investigate, but a stream of atomic bombs

that lasted for over an hour, and churned the rock to dust, and the dust

to molten lava, in which pools of fused tungsten-beryllium alloy bubbled

slowly and sank.

"Ah, Jarth--they are a brave race, whatever we may say of their queer

shape," sighed Gresth Gkae as the last of Mars Center sank in bubbling

lava. "They stung as they died." For some minutes he was silent.

"We must move on," he said at length. "I have been thinking, and it

seems best that a few ships land here, and establish a fort, while some

twenty move on to the satellite of the third planet and destroy the fort

there. We cannot operate against the planet while that hangs above us."

Seven ships settled to Mars, while the fleet came up from Jupiter to

join with Gresth Gkae's flight of ships on its way to Luna.

An automatically controlled ship was sent ahead, and began the

bombardment. It approached slowly, and was not destroyed by the UV beams

till it had come to within 40,000 miles of the fort. At 60,000 Gresth

Gkae stationed his fleet--and returned to 150,000 immediately as the

titanic UV beams of the Lunar Fort stretched out to their maximum range.

The focus made a difference. One ship started limping back to Jupiter,

in tow of a second, while the rest began the slow, methodical work of

wearing down the defenses of the Lunar Fort.

Kendall looked out at the magnificent display of clashing, warring

energies, the great, whirling spheres and discs of opalescent flame, and

turned away sadly. "The men at Deenmor must have watched that for days.

And at Mars Center."

"How long can we hold out?" asked McLaurin.

"Three weeks or so, at the present rate. That's a long time, really. And

we can escape if we want to. The UV beams here have a greater range than

any weapon the Strangers have, and with Earth so near--oh, we could

escape. Little good."

"What are you going to do?"

"I," said Buck Kendall, suddenly savage, "am going to consign all the

math machines in the universe to eternal damnation--and go ahead and

build a machine anyway. I _know_ that thing ought to be right. The

math's wrong."

"There is no other thing to try?"

"A billion others. I don't know how many others. We ought to get atomic

energy somehow. But that thing infuriates me. A hundred things that math

has predicted, that I have checked by experiment, simple little things.

But--when I carry it through to the point where I can get something

useful--it wriggles off into--uncertainty."

Kendall stalked off to the laboratory. Devin was there working over the

calculus machines, and Kendall called him angrily. Then more apologetic,

he explained it was anger at himself. "Devin, I'm going to make that

thing, if it blows up and kills me. I'm going to make that thing if this

whole fort blows up and kills me. That math has blown up in my face for

four solid months, and half killed me, so I'm going to kill it. Come on,

we'll make that damned junk."

Angrily, furiously, Kendall drove his helpers to the task. He had worked

out the apparatus in plan a dozen times, and now he had the plans turned

into patterns, the patterns into metal.

Saucily, the "S Doradus" made the trip to and from Earth with patterns,

and with metal, with supplies and with apparatus. But she had to dodge

and fight every inch of the way as the Miran ships swooped down angrily

at her. A fighting craft could get through when the Miran fleet was

withdrawn to some distance, but the Mirans were careful that no

heavy-loaded freighter bearing power supply should get through.

And Gresth Gkae waited off Luna in his great ship, and watched the

steady streams of magnetic bombs exploding on the magnetic shield of the

Lunar Fort. Presently more ships came up, and added their power to the

attack, for here, the photo-cell banks could gather tremendous energy,

and Gresth Gkae knew he would need to overcome this, and drain the

accumulated power.

Gresth Gkae felt certain if he could once crack this nut, break down

Earth, he would have the system. This was the home planet. If this fell,

then the two others would follow easily, despite the fact that the few

forts on the innermost planet, Mercury, could gather energy from the sun

at a rate greater than their ships could generate.

It took Kendall two weeks and three days to set up his preliminary

apparatus. They had power for perhaps four days more, thanks to the fact

that the long Lunar day had begun shortly after Gresth Gkae's impatient

attack had started. Also, the "S Doradus" had brought in several hundred

tons of charged mercury on each trip, though this was no great quantity

individually, it had mounted up in the ten trips she had made. The

"Cepheid," her sister ship, had gone along on seven of the trips, and

added to the total.

But at length the apparatus was set up. It was peculiar looking, and it

employed a great deal of power, nearly as much as a UV beam in fact.

McLaurin looked at it sceptically toward the last, and asked Buck: "What

do you expect it to do?"

"I am," said Kendall sourly, "uncertain. The result will be uncertainty

itself."

Which, considering things, was a surprisingly accurate statement.

Kendall gave the exact answer. He meant to give an ironic comment. For

the mathematics had been perfectly correct, only Buck Kendall

misinterpreted the answer.

"I've followed the math with mechanism all the way through," he

explained, "and I'm putting power into it. That's all I know. Somewhere,

by the laws of cause and effect, this power _must_ show itself

again--despite what the damn math says."

And in that, of course, Kendall was wrong. Because the laws of cause and

effect didn't hold in what he was doing now.

"Do you want to watch?" he asked at length. "I'm all set to try it."

"I suppose I may as well." McLaurin smiled. "In our close-knit little

community the fate of one is of interest to all. If it's going to blow

up, I might as well be here, and if it isn't, I want to be."

Kendall smiled appreciatively and replied: "Let it be on thy own head.

Here she goes."

He walked over to the power board, and took command. Devin, and a squad

of other scientists were seated about the room with every conceivable

type and combination of apparatus. Kendall wanted to see what this was

doing. "Tubes," he called. "Circuits A and D. Tie-ins." He stopped, the

preliminary switches in. "Main circuit coming." With a jerk he threw

over the last contact. A heavy relay thudded solidly. The hum of a

straining atostor. Then--

An electric motor, humming smoothly stopped with a jerk. "This," it

remarked in a deep throaty voice, "is probably the last stand of

humanity."

The galvanometer before which Devin was seated apparently agreed. In a

rather high pitched voice it pointed out that: "If the Lunar Fort falls,

the Earth--" It stopped abruptly, and an electroscope beside Douglass

took up the thread in a high, shrill voice, rather slurred, "--will be

directly attacked."

"This," resumed the motor in a hoarse voice, "will certainly mean the

end of humanity." The motor gave up the discourse and hummed violently

into action--in reverse!

"My God!" Kendall pulled the switch open with a sagging jaw and staring

eyes.

The men in the room burst into sudden startled exclamations.

Kendall didn't give them time. His jaw snapped shut, and a blazing light

of wondrous joy shone in his eyes. He instantly threw the switch in

again. Again the humming atostor, the strain--

Slowly Devin lifted from his seat. With thrashing arms and startled,

staring eyes, he drifted gently across the room. Abruptly he fell to the

floor, unhurt by the light Lunar gravity.

"I advise," said the motor in its grumbling voice, "an immediate

exodus." It stopped speaking, and practiced what it preached. It was a

fifty-horse motor-generator, on a five-ton tungsten-beryllium base, but

it rose abruptly, spun rapidly about an axis at right angles to the axis

of its armature, and stopped as suddenly. In mid air it continued its

interrupted lecture. "Mercury therefore is the destination I would

advise. There power is sufficient for--all machines." Gently it inverted

itself and settled to the middle of the floor. Kendall instantly cut the

switch. The relay did not chunk open. It refused to obey. Settled in the

middle of the floor now, torn loose from its power leads, the

motor-generator began turning. It turned faster and faster. It was

shrilling in a thin scream of terrific speed, a speed that should have

torn its windings to fragments under the lash of centrifugal force.

Contentedly it said throatily. "Settled."

The galvanometer spoke again in its peculiar harsh voice. "Therefore,

move." Abruptly, without apparent reason, the stubborn relay clicked

open. The shrilly screaming motor stopped dead instantly, as though it

had had no real momentum, or had been inertialess.

Startled, white-faced men looked at Kendall. Buck's eyes were shining

with an unholy glee.

"_Uncertainty!_" he shouted. "Uncertainty--uncertainty--uncertainty,

you fools! Don't you see it? All the math--it said uncertainty--man,

man--_we've got just that--uncertainty_!"

"You're crazy," gasped McLaurin. "I'm crazy, everything's gone crazy."

Kendall roared with sudden, joyous laughter. "Absolutely. Everything

goes crazy--_the laws of nature break down_! Heisenberg's principle

showed that the law of cause and effect weren't absolute. We've made

them absolutely uncertain!"

"But--but motors _talking_, instruments giving lectures--"

"Certainly--or rather uncertainly--anything, absolutely anything. The

destruction of the laws of gravity, freedom from inertia--why, merely

picking up a radio lecture is nothing!"

Suddenly, abruptly, a thousand questions poured in on him. Jubilantly he

answered what he could, told what he thought--and then brought order.

"The battle's still on, men--we've still got to find out how to use

this, now we've got it. I have an idea--that there's a lot more. I know

what I'll get this time. Now help me remake this apparatus so we don't

broadcast the thing."

At once, ten times the former pace, work was done. On the radio, news

was sent out that Kendall was on the right track after all. In two hours

the apparatus had been vastly altered, it was in the final stage, and an

entirely different sort of field set up. Again they watched as Buck

applied the power.

The atostor hummed--but no strange tricks of matter happened this time.

The more concentrated, altered field was, as Buck was to find out later,

"Uncertainty of the Second Degree." It was molecular uncertainty. In a

field a foot and a half in diameter, Buck saw the thing created--and

suddenly a brilliant green-blue flame shot up, and a great dark cloud of

terrible, red-brown deadly vapor. Then an instant later, Kendall had

opened the relay. Gasping, the men ran from the laboratory, shutting the

deadly fumes in. "N{2}O{4}" gasped Morton, the chemist, as they reached

safety. "It's exothermic--but it formed there!"

In that instant, Kendall grasped the meaning the choking fumes carried.

"Molecular uncertainty!" he decided. "We're going back--we're getting

there--"

He altered the apparatus again, added another atostor in series, reduced

the size of his sphere of forces--of strange chaos of uncertainty.

Within--little was certain. Without--the laws of nature applied as ever.

Again the apparatus was started, cautiously this time. Only a strange

jumbled ionization appeared this time, then a slow, rising blue flame

began to creep up, and burn hot and blue. Buck looked at it for a

moment, then his face grew tense and thoughtful. "Devin--give me a

half-dollar." Blankly, Devin reached in his pocket, and handed over the

metal disc. Cautiously Buck Kendall tossed it toward the sphere of

force. Instantly there was a flash of flame, soundless and soft-colored.

Then the silver disc was outlined in light, and swiftly, inevitably

crumbling into dust so fine only a blue haze appeared. In less than two

seconds, the metal was gone. Only the dense blue fog remained. Then this

began to go, and the leaping blue flame grew taller, and stronger.

"We're on the track--I'm going to stop here, and calculate. Bring the

data--"

Kendall shut off the machine, and went to the calculation room. Swiftly

he selected already prepared graphs, graphs of the math he had worked

on. Devin came soon, and others. They assembled the data and with tables

and arithmetical machines turned it into graphs.

Then all these graphs were fed into the machine. There were curves, and

sine-curves, abrupt breaking lines--but the answer that came when all

were compounded was a perfect diagram of a flight of four steps,

descending in unequal treads to zero.

Kendall looked at it for long minutes. "That," he said at length, "is

what I expected. There are four degrees of uncertainty, we generated

'Uncertainty of the First Degree,' 'Mass Uncertainty,' when we started.

That, as here shown, takes little energy concentration. Then we

increased the energy concentration and got 'Uncertainty of the Second

Degree,' 'Molecular Uncertainty.' Then I added more power, and reduced

the field, and got 'Uncertainty of the Third Degree'--'Atomic

Uncertainty.' There is 'Uncertainty of the Fourth Degree.' It is barely

attainable with our atostors. It is--utter uncertainty.

"In the First Degree, the laws of mass action fail, the great

broad-reaching laws. In the Second Degree, the laws of the molecules, a

finer organization, break down, and anything can happen in chemistry. In

the Third Degree, the laws of atomic physics break down slowly. The atom

is tough. It is very compact, and we just barely attained the

concentration needed with that apparatus. But--in the Third Degree, when

the Atomic Laws break down into utter uncertainty, the atoms break, and

only hydrogen can exist. That was the blue flame.

"But the Fourth Degree--_there is no law whatsoever_, nothing in all the

Universe can exist. It means--_the utter destruction and release of the

energy of matter_!" Kendall paused for a moment. "We have won, with

this. We need only make up this apparatus--and maybe make it into a

weapon. You know, in the Fourth Degree, nothing in all the Universe

could resist, deflect, or control it, if launched freely, and

self-maintaining. I think that might be done. You see, no law affects

it, for it breaks down the law. Magnetism cannot attract or repel it

because magnetic fields cannot exist; there is no law of magnetic force,

where this field is.

"And you know, Devin, how I have analyzed and duplicated their magnetic

ball-fields. This should be capable of formation into a ball-field.

"We need only make it up now. We will install it in the 'S Doradus' and

the 'Cepheid' as a weapon. We need only install it as an energy source

here. Let us start."