[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, October 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The little man with the gray beard stared at me and I stared back at
him. "This is getting us nowhere," I remarked, "nowhere at all."
He nodded and sat down on the hard stone. We were trapped under the
building. The house had come down over us when the bomb landed in the
street. The rest of the tenants were probably away or dead. Apparently
only the little old man who lived on the second floor rear and I had
gotten down to the bomb-proof cellar in time. And now we were trapped.
"We'll have to wait until they dig us out," I said. We couldn't
possibly dig our own way out. Too much blocked us in. We were buried
beneath tons of brick, rubbish and beams. They were probably busy in
the street outside, trying to rescue the people in other, less-damaged
buildings. Then again there might be fire, and the noise effectively
blocked any chance of their hearing us.
I saw him only by the light of my little pocket flash. That wouldn't
last very long. Our space was remarkably limited. This shelter had been
a part of the cellar. It had been blocked off and roofed over, but
even so, part of it fell in--the part with the supplies and stuff--the
part opening on the exit.
"Well," I said, just to say something, "what do we do now? Sit around
and wait to die?"
The little old man wrinkled his brow in thought. He didn't seem too
worried about dying. I guess when you're his age and have a long gray
beard you get reconciled to the prospect. But I was young, and frankly
I didn't like the idea at all.
"I think I know a way," the little old man said finally, "but it will
seem like madness. Probably it is. It's never been tried. It may never
work."
I seized him by the lapels. "Any way is better than none. I'd rather
die trying than sitting down moping my life away. Tell it to me."
"You won't laugh? You will take whatever I say seriously?" the little
old man asked anxiously.
I saw he didn't want to die the object of scorn, and I saw also that he
must have something pretty odd up his sleeve. "No," I answered, "you
won't hear a peep out of me."
"Then," said the old man, "if you can prepare yourself, you could walk
out through the rocks."
* * * * *
In spite of my promise, I gasped. But then I squelched myself and
thought that if I was with a lunatic, I might as well make the most
of it. He was now the other half of my universe and so standards had
changed. Facing death, any straw will do.
"Proceed," I said. "Explain further."
"Rocks," said the little old man--I guess he must have been a scientist
of some sort--"and all other matter are composed of nothing mainly,
with a little vibration thrown in."
I kept my mouth shut. I wasn't going to say anything to the contrary
even if he claimed black was white.
"Matter," he went on, "is composed entirely of atom. Atoms are broken
down to electrons and protons and their kin. They, in turn, appear to
be nothing but charges of electricity, charges of energy, not matter.
So that all matter is really just a manifestation of energy in a
peculiar state of stress."
I waited. This made sense. I began to recognize some of the things I
had learned years ago in high school physics.
"Between the vortices of energy which make up the building-blocks of
matter, there are comparatively vast stretches of just plain empty
space. Within the atom, almost all is vacuum. Between molecules, more
vacuum. In a so-called solid mass, it could be demonstrated that less
than a quadrillionth part of its mass has any reality and that only
in the form of disturbances of energy. And that figure is grossly
exaggerated."
I waited. This was still making sense. And anyway, when you are
hopelessly trapped there is no sense in being impatient.
"If," went on the professor, "you understand this and project the
picture of it in your mind, you can mentally resolve all things into
swirls of nothingness, into less than air. If you can do so, you can
attain complete control over your own body--for we alone are able to
control our own masses by means of will.
"And if you can picture these masses of rock as pools of nothing and
yourself as the same, you can pass yourself through these rocks as a
whiff of smoke in air. You can revisualize yourself as solid outside
this trapping pile."