path: root/78455-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78455 ***

                        EXPLORERS into INFINITY

                           By Ray Cummings.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                  Weird Tales April, May, June 1927.]




                               CONTENTS


                        FOREWORD
                      1 FREEDOM IN TIME AND SPACE
                      2 "THIS COULD DESTROY THE UNIVERSE"
                      3 EXPLORERS INTO INFINITY
                      4 THE WATCHERS
                      5 THE RETURN
                      6 THE FLIGHT INTO TIME, SIZE AND SPACE
                      7 "A SINGLE STARLIT NIGHT--AN ETERNITY"
                      8 THE ENCOUNTER IN THE FOREST GLADE
                      9 "DWINDLING GIANTS FROM LARGENESS UNFATHOMABLE"
                     10 THE SOLITARY VOYAGER
                     11 BRAVE LITTLE BEACON STRIVING TO PIERCE INFINITY




                              _FOREWORD_


_Some of my present readers will doubtless remember "The Girl in the
Golden Atom." When I wrote that book of the realm of infinite smallness
there was in my mind its logical converse, the realm of the infinitely
large. The one a complement to the other. And so I offer "Explorers
Into Infinity," in no sense as a sequel to "The Girl in the Golden
Atom," for fictionally they have no connection, but rather as its
companion story._

_You will find here a complete theory of the material universe as I
conceive it may perhaps really be. To my own imagination--and I think
very likely to your own--it is difficult to conceive of an infinite
distance beyond the stars--empty Space stretching out forever. Nor is
Einstein more satisfying to me, rather less so, for out beyond the
Einstein system of curved Space must lie something or nothing. It
is the nothingness which puzzles me. I have tried vainly to imagine
a realm, infinitely large, of unending nothingness. Time is equally
puzzling. I can conceive of eventful eons lying ahead of us; but rob
that time of its future events and I flounder. To me at least, the
conception of Time with nothing ever happening anywhere is impossible.
To me also, an event presupposes the existence of something; and so,
in my effort to imagine the infinitely large--Space illimitable, Time
unending--I am forced to conceive what must fill that Space, what must
happen to create that time._

_You may call this tale fantastic, weird, bizarre. Doubtless it is. But
with our most powerful microscopes reaching inward so tiny a distance
to see no end in infinite smallness; our greatest telescopes groping
futilely out into largeness unending to our vision, what is left but
our imagination? And that, at least, we can send winging into the
infinite!_

_I would not have you fear from this foreword that my story may be some
pedantic, heavily technical exposition. It is not; for it is fiction
only--a romance with which to entertain you; an effort, by using
fictional methods, to reduce theories purely imaginative into concrete
form with as great a degree of plausibility as may be. It is this only
I desire: to carry you with me as you read; to make plausible this
flight of our imaginations momentarily set free from the tiny everyday
universe which is all we have physically to envisage._

                                                          RAY CUMMINGS.




                              _CHAPTER 1_

                       FREEDOM IN TIME AND SPACE


I was busy with the Martian mail which had just arrived when the
message from Brett Gryce reached me. I did not apprehend that there
was anything of secrecy about it, since he was using the open air; yet
there was in his voice a note of tenseness and his summons was urgent.

"I can't come, Brett, until I get through the mail." I was rushed, and
in a mood of ill-temper at the universe in general.

"When will that be?" he demanded.

"I don't know. It's accursedly large. Most of it seems to call for
radio distribution--these Martians are always in a hurry."

"Come when you can," he said quietly.

"Tonight?"

"Yes--tonight. No matter how late--I must see you, Frank."

"I'll come," I said, and cut him off.

It was long past trinight, with dawn beginning to brighten the sky
beyond the masonry of lower Great-New York, when I had disposed of
those miserable Martian dispatches. The Gryces lived in the Southern
Pennsylvania area. My aerocar was at hand. I had rather planned to use
it; but I was tired and in no mood for effort. I decided to take the
pneumatic, since there was a branch--little traveled, it is true--which
would drop me within some twenty kilometers of the Gryce home.

They gave me an individual cylinder, with a bed if I cared to sleep.
I did not. I lay there wondering what Brett could want of me; pleased
also that I would see Francine--dear little Frannie. . . .

Occasionally I would call the Director ahead. They are sometimes
careless in the switching of special individual cylinders; and I had
no wish to pass the branch and find myself bringing up at some gulf
terminal with half the morning getting back. Once I called Brett. He
would meet me with his aero at the end of the branch when I arrived.
He, too, reminded the Director. A surly sort of fellow; the Gryces had
already reported him to the General Traffic Staff of Great-London.

I was not misdirected, however; but it was broad daylight when I
emerged to find Brett impatiently awaiting me. And in a few minutes
more we were landing at the aero-stage beside the Gryce home.

It was a simple enough place--for all Dr. Gryce's reputed wealth.
An estate of a few kilometers, set in a heavy grove of trees with
a high metallic wall about it. The granite house itself was small,
unpretentious. There were few outbuildings; one a large rectangular
affair which vaguely I understood was a workshop. I had never been in
it. I knew old Dr. Gryce was interested in science; in his day he had
materially advanced civilization with several fundamental devices. But
what--if anything--he might be doing now, I had no idea.

Brett would tell me nothing beyond the fact that his father had
suggested they send for me. But he seemed excited, tense. Dr. Gryce
greeted me with his familiar kindliness. Though I did not see as much
of this family as I would like (my business with the Interplanetary
Mails was wholly underpaid and miserably confining), yet I counted the
Gryces among my closest friends.

Dr. Gryce said, "We are very glad to see you, Frank. Come outside.
Frannie is preparing breakfast."

His manner was grave and quiet as always. But there was about him also
an air of tenseness; and an aspect of apprehension. And it struck me,
a sort of weary, resigned depression which suddenly made his years sit
more heavily upon him. He was a man of some eighty odd; and though for
him no more than twenty or thirty years of life could be anticipated,
I had never considered him really old. He was small, slight of frame,
but erect, sturdy and vigorous. A smooth-shaven face with no more lines
upon it than a keen intellect and a character once wholly forceful
would engrave. And a mass of snow-white shaggy hair to make his head
appear preternaturally large.

He seemed old now, however, with that sense of depression hanging upon
him. And an indefinable aspect of fear.

I must allot a word to picture the three children of Dr. Gryce,
motherless since childhood. Brett was now twenty-eight--three years
older than myself, and physically my opposite. I am short, slender
and rather dark. And--so they tell me--not too even of temper. Brett
was a blond young giant. Crisp, wavy blond hair, blue eyes and the
strong-featured, ruddy face of a handsome athlete. But not too
handsome, for there was upon him no consciousness of his essentially
masculine beauty. He was wonderfully good-natured. His was a ready,
hearty laugh. He looked at life often from the humorous viewpoint. But
he had also a touch of his father's grave dignity; and a keen intellect
and a soberness of thought and reason far beyond his years.

The two other children--Martynn and Francine--were twins, now just
seventeen. Alike, physically and temperamentally, as children of a
birth traditionally should be. Slim and rather small--Martynn about my
height; Francine somewhat shorter. Both blue-eyed, with blond hair.
Francine's hair was long-waving tresses which she wore generally in
plaits over her shoulders; Martynn's was short and curly. They were
rather alike of feature; a delicacy of mold which gave to Martynn a
girlishness. But not an effeminacy, for he was a young daredevil; and
his sister hardly a lesser one. In childhood and adolescence an impish
spirit of deviltry had always seemed to possess these twins; a spirit
of mischief which had made them a great trial to their father. It had
turned, now that they were nearing maturity, into an apparent desire
for reckless adventure--the product of abounding health, and bubbling,
irrepressible good nature. They adored each other; were constantly
together, with youthful escapades threatening limb and life and
complete disaster, out of which they would emerge or be extricated with
dauntless spirits unperturbed.

The greater maturity of womanhood at seventeen had brought to Frannie
moments of gentleness, sweetness and a simple dignity. But they were
brief moments, and no more than a word or look from her twin was needed
to dispel them. Martt himself was without a vestige of dignity. But
they were no fools, these twins. They could, upon strict necessity,
give sober, intelligent thought to any problem at hand (Martynn had won
honors at the Great-London University); but of sober, matured action
they were incapable. Fearless--unreasonably fearless. But irresistible,
likable, and apparently quite capable of being restrained. A word
from Dr. Gryce, or from Brett--and to a lesser extent from me who had
known them from childhood--brought instant though often very temporary
obedience. They considered themselves quite grown up now. In truth, at
seventeen, Frannie was to my eyes a really beautiful young woman.


                                  II

We sat in a little arbor beside the house, with its breakfast table
already laid. Dr. Gryce, Brett, and myself. Martt was with Frannie
preparing the meal. It was evidence of the simplicity which marked
the Gryce household. In these days of mechanical devices for almost
everything--and the usual multiplicity of servants--there was not a
meal prepared for Dr. Gryce save by his daughter.

I was very curious to learn why they had sent for me; but I had no need
to question, for at once Dr. Gryce plunged into it.

"I hope, Frank, that you can stay--well, at least a few days with us.
Can you?"

I stared. The Day Officer of the Manhattan Interplanetary Postal
Division was undoubtedly already in a rage at my absence. I said so.
"A few days? Dr. Gryce, I dread every conjunction that brings these
accursed mails--my divisional officers think it's a crime even to eat
or sleep when a planet is near us."

He smiled. "I imagine I can fix it."

"Then I'll stay, of course. If you could fix the planetary orbits so
that they were parabolas, Dr. Gryce, it would suit me exactly."

He and Brett both were smiling, but Dr. Gryce's smile was momentary,
for at once that indefinable air of trouble returned to him.

"Frank," he said, "I hardly know how to begin telling you what we have
done--are about to do. It seems curious also--I know it will strike you
so, you have been such a friend to me and my children--that during all
these years we have given you no hint of our purpose."

"We have told no one," Brett put in: "no one in the world."

I said nothing, but my curiosity increased. It was doubtless of grave
import, this thing they had to tell me; the solemnity, earnestness
which stamped them both was unmistakable.

For a moment Dr. Gryce was silent; then he said abruptly, "You know,
Frank, all my life I have been engaged with science. In a measure, I
have been successful; there are a few devices which will bear my name
when I am gone."

I nodded. "I know that very well, Dr. Gryce."

"But all those things," he added earnestly, "all that I stand for to
the world, has really been of little importance to me. My main labor,
goal, dream, if you will, I have never told anyone--not a living person
except my children. For ten years past Brett has been helping me. And
though you would hardly believe it, for the last year or two Martt and
Frannie have been of material aid in the accomplishment of my purpose."

"What branch of science?" I asked. "And you've accomplished it? You're
ready to give it to the world?"

"Accomplished it--yes. But we are not ready to give it to the
world--perhaps we never shall. There would be evil in it--evil
diabolical--in untrained or unscrupulous hands. But we are ready to
test it--a practical test. Tonight, Frank, my boy Brett is going upon
an adventure----"

The fear which had been lurking in his eyes leaped to stamp his other
features. He was afraid for Brett--afraid of this thing they were going
to do. He had stopped abruptly; and more quietly he added:

"I want you to understand me, Frank, and so for a moment we must
be wholly theoretical. This thing we are about to do involves the
construction of our whole material universe. You know, of course, that
no limit has been found to the divisibility of matter?"

His sudden question confused me. "You mean," I stammered, "that things
can be infinitely small?"

"That there is no limit to smallness," Brett put in. "An atom--an
electron--they are mere words. Within them conceivably might be a
space with stars, planets, suns--worlds of their own so tiny that
compared to the Space in which they roam that Space would seem--and
would be--illimitable. Picture that, Frank. And picture upon one of
those worlds inhabitants of proportionate smallness. What would they
see, feel or think of the universe? Would they not conceive it about as
we do? Picture them with powerful microscopes, looking downward into
the matter composing their world. They would be aware of molecules,
atoms--they would gaze down into Space unending. Another realm within
their own. And within that one--others and yet others to infinity. The
conception confuses you, Frank? It need not. Each of those realms is
tiny--or large--according to the viewpoint. There can be no such thing
as absolute size."

"That is what I mean," Dr. Gryce interrupted eagerly. "Absolute
size--how can you conceive it? You can not. A thing is large or small
only in relation to something else smaller or larger."

He waved his hand to the rolling landscape with the morning light and
shadow upon it, visible through the arbor.

"There is our everyday world, Frank. How big is it? You can not say.
Millimeters, meters, kilometers, helans, light-years--those are only
words with which we designate a comparison. Compared to what our
microscopes show us, this world of ours is very large, but compared to
the spaces between the stars--the stars themselves--it is very small.
Try then to imagine its absolute size. You can not, because there is
no such thing. A universe within what we call an atom--another realm
within an atom of matter upon one of the worlds of _that_ universe--is
not an extraordinary state of smallness _until we compare it with
ourselves_.

"And this world of ours. It is normal to us; of no absolute size
whatever--neither large nor small--until we compare it to something
else. But suppose we visualize larger realms? Suppose we say these
planets, stars--all the starry universe within our ken and this visual
space which contains them--suppose we imagine all that to be contained
within the atom of a particle of matter of some comparatively still
larger realm? At once our world and ourselves shrink into smallness.
Where a moment ago we had seemed large, now we seem small. Yet that
other gigantic world within which we are contained--if we could live in
it our telescopes would show us still larger Space unending. We would
feel tiny--and of actuality _we would be tiny_--contemplating Space and
size so much larger."

"And there you have infinity of Space," Brett added, as his father
paused. "Unending Space both smaller and larger than ourselves.
We--everything of which we can be physically aware--represent no more
than a single step in the ladder which has no bottom nor no top. You
can not conceive an end in either direction. There is no such thing.
Nor--as Father says--can you declare anything to be small or large
considered by itself alone. This then is Space as we conceive it to be.
Illimitable, unending--infinite Space."

The conception momentarily seemed wholly beyond my grasp. What I would
have answered when for a moment Dr. Gryce and Brett paused I do not
know, for from the house the approaching voices of Martt and Frannie
reached us.

"You'll fall, I tell you! Frannie, give me that!"

"I won't."

"You'll trip over the wires and you'll fall and smash it!"

"I won't."

The sound of a crash. And Martt's voice, "There, I told you!"

They were upon us, wheeling the tray laden with breakfast; Martt,
flushed, laughing. "Oh, hello, Frank--they didn't switch you wrong, did
they? Frannie broke the heater coils--if the breakfast gets cold, don't
blame me."

And Frannie, also flushed and laughing and a trifle rueful over the
mishap. Dressed in a blue blouse and widely flaring, knee-length
trousers, with her golden hair tossing on her shoulders. The picture of
a little housewife, of early morning informality. I thought I had never
seen her so beautiful.


                                  III

"That, Frank, is our conception of the infinity of Space."

With breakfast finished Brett had resumed the discussion. We were
all seated in the arbor. Martt and Frannie momentarily were quiet,
seemingly keenly interested in the impression upon me which they
anticipated would come from their father's disclosures.

Dr. Gryce said, "The idea of Time unending is indissolubly bound with
the concept of infinite Space. You will realize, Frank, for some
centuries it has been understood that Time and Space are inextricably
blended. We think instinctively of Space as a tangible entity--of
length, breadth and thickness. And of Time, as intangible. Such really
is not the case. Space has three dimensions--but Time also has a
dimension."

"Length," Martt put in. "It sounds like a play on words, but--"

"It isn't," Frannie finished for him. "I can't imagine anything clearer
than that Time has length."

Dr. Gryce ignored them. "You must understand also that Time as we
conceive it can not exist except as the measurement of a _length_
between two events. And what is an event? It presupposes the existence
of _Matter_, does it not? Matter thus is introduced into the universe.
It also can not be independent of Time and Space. So long as anything
material exists, there must be Space for it to exist in; and Time to
mark the passing of its existence.

"Of our universe, then, we now have Matter, Time and Space. There is a
fourth--shall I say, element? It also is interdependent with each of
the other three. It is _Motion_. You know, of course, that there can be
no such thing as absolute Motion."

"Or absolute Time," Frannie put in.

"That we will discuss later," Dr. Gryce said quickly, "since it is
more intricate of conception. Absolute Motion is impossible and
non-existent. We can say a thing moves fast or slowly, _only in
relation to the movement of something else_. One word more. I want you
to realize, Frank, how wholly dependent each of these factors is upon
the other. _Matter_, for instance, is an entity persisting in Space
and Time. _Motion_ is the simultaneous change of the position of Matter
in Space and Time. A thing was _here, then_; it is _there, now_. That
is Motion. You see how you can not deal with one without involving the
others?"

"Say, Father, why don't you tell him what we're going to do?" Martt
demanded. "Frank, listen--tonight Brett and I----"

"But I'm going, too," Frannie declared.

"You're not!"

I saw again that look of fear in old Dr. Gryce's eyes. His
children--the spirit of youth with its lust for adventure--they were
eager and excited. But Dr. Gryce saw beyond that--saw the danger. . .

He said gravely, "There is no possibility of my making you understand
the details, Frank, until we have gone into the matter thoroughly.
But as Martt implies, you are no doubt impatient. I will tell you
then, briefly, that for most of my life I have been delving into
this subject--Matter, Space, Time and Motion illimitable. Longing to
investigate this immense material universe which I believe exists. But
we humans are fettered, Frank. Like an ant, living for a brief moment
enchained with a cobweb to a twig and trying to envisage the earth."

His voice now was trembling with emotion. "I was satisfied to see with
my own eyes some little part into infinity. I invented what we--my
children and I--call the myrdoscope. I will explain it presently.
Suffice it now to say that there are normally invisible rays, akin
to light, crossing Space, and I have made them visible. We captured
them--saw after a myriad trials unavailing, occasional vague glimpses
of the beyond which came to us. It might have satisfied me, but three
years ago, one night, Brett saw----"

He paused, looking at Brett. Martt and Frannie were breathless, with
eyes fixed on me.

Brett said, and his voice had a queer, solemn hush to it, "I was
looking through the myrdoscope. We had seen blurred, brief glimpses of
a realm----"

"Beyond the stars," Frannie breathed.

"Yes, beyond the stars. A realm seemingly of forest, or
something growing. Silvery patches--you might imagine they were
water, or light shining upon something that glistened. They
were always haphazard, these glimpses. We caught them, not
always from one direction--seemingly from everywhere. A realm
encompassing--enclosing--our whole star-filled Space.

"With the labor of years, which you, Frank, will appreciate to some
degree, Father has charted what for our own little ken we might call
absolute points in Space. Landmarks, say, of this outer realm. With our
whirling earth, the ever-changing planets and stars, only this outer
realm seemed of fixed position. We could sometimes return our gaze to
the same landmark--a tremendous crescent-shaped patch of silver, for
instance, which several times we succeeded in re-finding.

"It was near this patch at which I was one night gazing, when through
some vagary of the ray bearing its image--or some difference in our
crude apparatus--the scene suddenly clarified. And magnified as though
at once I had leaped a million light-years toward it.

"I saw then a magnified section of the larger scene. The patch of
silver appeared now as a shimmering, opalescent liquid. A segment of
shore-front; and this all in a moment, again magnified. Upon a bluish
bank of soft vegetation, with the opal liquid beside it, I saw a girl
half reclining. A girl of human form, but transfigured by a beauty
more than human. A girl of a civilization behind our own--or perhaps
one in advance--I do not know. She was robed in a short, simple garment
more like a glistening, glowing silver veil than a dress. Her hair was
long--a tangled dark mass. She reclined there in an attitude of ease
and the abandonment of maidenly solitude. I say that she was more than
beautiful--oh, Frank----"

Brett's voice had suddenly lost the precise exactitude of the
scientist. He seemed to have forgotten his father--Martt and Frannie;
it was as though he were confiding his human emotions only to me.

"Beautiful, Frank. A strange, wild beauty, with a curious ethereal
aspect to it. I don't know--it's indescribable. Human--half human, but
half divine."

       *       *       *       *       *

He checked himself; the scientist in him again became uppermost; but
though he now spoke with careful phrasing, his face remained flushed.

"It was some moments before I saw additional details. And then I
realized that the girl was not alone. Upon her bare feet were a sort of
sandal with thongs crossing the ankle. And standing there beside one of
her feet were two tiny human figures. In height, the length perhaps of
her little foot. Men of human form; yet queerly grotesque; misshapen.
One of them was in the act of reaching upward toward the tassel of her
sandal cord where it dangled from her ankle; reaching as though to
grasp it and draw himself upward. The other was watching; and both were
grinning with gnomelike malevolence.

"Nor was this all, for behind the girl, a brief distance away in what
appeared a woodland dell, was another figure--a man of aspect akin to
the grinning gnomes, save that in comparative size even to the girl
he was gigantic. Ten times her height, perhaps, he stood behind her
towering into the trees about him. A man of short, squat legs, dark
with matted hair; a garment like the gnomes', which might have been an
animal skin; a heavy massive chest; black hair long to his neck. A face
with clipped hair upon it. He was regarding the girl; a grin, but with
a leer to it--horribly sinister. And in his great hands, brandished
like a bludgeon, was an uprooted tree.

"Have I given you an idea of motion in the scene? There was none.
The girl was obviously wholly unaware that she was not alone. She
lay motionless. But the lack of movement in her--in them all--was
more marked than that. The girl's lips were parted in a half-smile of
revery; but the outlines of her bosom beneath the silver veil did not
move. There was no movement of breath; no change of expression. The
gnomes, the giant--not the minutest change could I see mirrored in
their faces.

"Yet it was so lifelike, I could not doubt it was life--and that the
motion was there though I could not see it. I watched all night,
shaken with this fragment of drama, perhaps tragedy, which I was
witnessing--but even the girl's eyelids did not tremble. Dawn came; the
scene faded.

"For a month I did not even tell Father; and Frank, the vision of that
girl has never left me. The menace--gruesome, sinister--upon her--and
her beauty----"

"Haven't you ever seen her again?" I asked eagerly. "Was it life? How
could it be life without motion?"

"Oh, he saw her again," Martt exclaimed. "I've seen her--we've all seen
her."

"Tell him, Brett," Frannie urged.

"A month before I even told Father. During it, I searched for the scene
unavailing, then Father and I searched together. It was a year, when
almost from the same orbital position we came upon the scene again.
A year--and now we saw a change. The figures all were there, frozen
into immobility as before. But the gnome had caught the tassel, had
drawn himself partly up to stand upon the girl's white ankle. The giant
had come a trifle forward, and the upraised tree in his hands was
partly lowered. The girl's attitude was unchanged, but there was now
upon her face the vague dawn of startled knowledge, as though at that
instant she was becoming aware of something pulling at her sandal cord,
something touching her ankle--perhaps too, she was hearing a sound from
the giant behind her. The startled knowledge which as yet had not had
time fully to register upon her face."

My mind was whirling with a confusion of thoughts; the vague
comprehension of what Brett meant was coming to me. I stammered, "Not
yet had time--but Brett, you must have watched them all that night----"

"That night, Frank. And others--but there was no sign of movement.
Another year--that was last year--we saw the girl partly aware of
her danger. This year--a month ago--she was fully aware of it.
Frightened--her eyes stricken wide with terror. But she had had no time
as yet to move.

"Don't you understand, Frank? That drama is going on out there now.
Like size of Matter and Space--and rate of Motion--there is no absolute
Time. It is all comparative. To that realm out there of which we have
been given a little vision, our tiny worlds here in the heavens are
mere whirling electrons, like the electrons within one of our own atoms
which to our consciousness of Time revolve many times a second.

"A year! A single revolution of our earth about its sun! To that girl
out there, what we call a year is merely an electron in a fraction of
a second revolving about its fellow. Even that is very slow--for she
herself is wholly within the atom of a greater world outside her. A
year as we call it--a second or less, to her. And though she is in full
movement, how can we hope to see it by watching for a night? If a year
were a second to her--an eight-hour vigil of ours would encompass less
than a thousandth part of a second of her life!

"All comparative, Frank. There is nothing wonderful or really strange
about it. In what we would experience to be a hundred years from now
that girl will be fully faced with the menace of her assailants. A
moment only, to her consciousness. It is that, Frank, we meant by the
infinity of Time."

"Tell him what we're going to do," Martt insisted breathlessly.

It came from Brett in a burst almost incoherent. "I was not satisfied
merely to see into this comparative infinity. Nor was Father. We have
worked three feverish years, Frank, to climax all the labor of Father's
which had gone before. And we have found a way--not merely to see,
but to transport ourselves into these greater realms. A vehicle--I'll
show you--explain it all. Its size can be changed--the state of the
matter composing it is within our control. Its position in Space can be
changed--simple enough, Frank, to enlarge upon the principles of our
interplanetary vehicles. And--with one factor so interdependent upon
the other--we have been able to control the rate of its Time-progress.
It travels through Time as it does through Space."

His words were tumbling over each other. "You'll see it in a moment,
Frank--test it--we have it here, ready yesterday. It sets us free,
don't you understand? Free at last in Space and Time. And I'm going in
it tonight--with Martt perhaps--we're going out to reach that girl upon
an equality of Size and Time-progress. Going out to explore infinity!"




                              _CHAPTER 2_

                   "THIS COULD DESTROY THE UNIVERSE"


I had anticipated that they would show me a vehicle similar perhaps
to the huge and elaborate space-flyers in the service of our
Interplanetary Postal Division. But instead of taking me to the
workshops where I had conceived it to be lying--serene, glistening
with newness, intricate with what devices for its changing of size and
Time-rate I could not imagine--instead of this they took me into the
house. And there, in Dr. Gryce's quiet study with its sober, luxurious
furnishings and his library of cylinders ranged in orderly array about
the walls, I saw not one but four machines--mere models standing there
on the polished table-top. Four of them identical--all of a milk-white
metal.

But they were models complete in every detail. I stood beside one,
regarding it with a breathless, absorbed interest as Dr. Gryce
commented upon it. A cube of about the length of my forearm in its
three equal dimensions, with a cone-shaped tower on top--a little
tower not much longer than my longest finger. The cube itself had a
rectangular doorway, and in each face two banks of windows. The door
slid sidewise, the windows were of a transparent material, like glass.
Midway about the cube ran a tiny balcony at the second-story level. It
was wholly enclosed by the glasslike material. It extended around all
four sides; small doors from it gave access to the cube's interior. The
cone on top also had windows, and its entire apex was transparent.

I bent down and peered into the lower doorway. Tiny rooms were there.
Bedrooms; a cookery--a house complete, save that it was wholly
unfurnished. The largest room on the lower story--its floor had a
circular transparent pane in it--was fitted with a seemingly intricate
array of tiny mechanisms all of the same milk-white metal. A metallic
table held most of them; and I could see wires fine as cobwebs
connecting them. And in a corner of this room, a metallic spiral
stairway leading to the upper story.

Dr. Gryce said, "That is the instrument room, complete. It contains
every mechanism for the operation of the vehicle. We made it in
this size--large enough to facilitate construction, but it is small
enough to be economical of material. This substance--we have never
named it--is of our own isolation. It is expensive. I'll explain it
presently. . . . That room beside the instrument room is where we will
put the usual everyday instruments necessary to the journey. Oxygen
tanks--the apparatus for air purification and air renewal; telescopes,
microscopes--my myrdoscope--all that sort of thing we can best obtain
in its normal size. Those--and the furnishings--the provisions--all
those in their normal size we will put into it later."

"You mean," I asked, "this is not a model? This is the actual vehicle?"

"Yes," he smiled.

"But there are four of them."

"We made six, Frank. It was advisable, and not unduly difficult to
duplicate the parts in the making. The assembling took time----"

Brett said, "Father was insistent that we make every advance test
possible. We have already used two of them. We are going to test the
others today."

"Now," exclaimed Frannie. "Do it now--Frank will want to see it."

Dr. Gryce lifted one of the vehicles. In his hand it seemed light as
alemite. He placed it on a taboret and we sat grouped around it.

"I shall send it into Time," he said quietly, "with its size unchanged,
with no motion in Space, so that always in relation to us it will
remain right here--I am going to send it back into other ages of Time."
He turned to me earnestly. "We wanted you here, Frank, because you are
so good a friend to me and my children. But for a selfish reason as
well. When Brett goes out into Space and Time tonight, I want your keen
eye to follow him. Your ability to record so accurately on the clocks
what you see at any given instant----"

He was referring to my experience at the Table Mountain observatory--my
first work when my training period was over. I had, indeed, a curiously
keen vision for astronomical observation, and a quickness of finger
upon the clock to record what I saw. In transit work I was extremely
accurate; even now they were asking the Postal Division for my services
at Table Mountain in the forthcoming transit of Venus.

Dr. Gryce was saying, "Your accuracy is phenomenal, Frank--your figures
as you observe what little we see of this flight will help me--set my
mind at rest that Brett is making no errors." He ended with a smile,
"So you realize we have a selfish motive in wanting you."

"I'm very glad," I responded. He nodded and went back at once to what
he had been saying previously. "I'm going to send this into Time. You
must understand, Frank, that I can give you now only the fundamental
concepts underlying this apparatus. We have so much to do today--so
little time for theory. I need only tell you that it is readily
demonstrable that Time is one of the inherent factors governing the
_state of Matter_. This substance we have discovered--created, if you
will--yields readily to a change of state. An electronic charge--a
current akin to, but not identical with electricity--changes the
state of this substance in several ways. A rapid duplication of the
fundamental entities within its electrons--they are, as you perhaps
know, mere _whirlpools of nothingness_--this rapid duplication adds
size. The substance--with shape unaltered--grows larger. With such a
size-change there comes a normal, correspondingly progressive change of
Time-rate. We had to go beyond that, however, and secure an independent
Time-rate, independently changeable, so that the vehicle might remain
quiescent in size and still change its Time. In doing that, the _state
of the matter_ as our senses perceive it is completely altered. As
you know, no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time.
Which only means that with the Time-dimensions identical, different
dimensions of Space are needed. With the Time-dimension differing--the
state of Matter is different; two bodies thus can be together in the
same space."

"What is a Time-dimension?" I asked. "I mean--how can you alter it?"

"I would say, Frank, that the Time-dimension of a material body is the
_length_--or a measure of the length--of its fundamental vibration.
Basically there is no real substance as we conceive it--for all
Matter is mere vibration. Let us delve into substance. We find Matter
consists of molecules vibrating in Space. Molecules are composed of
atoms vibrating in Space. Within the atoms are electrons, revolving
in Space. The electrons are without substance, merely vibrations
electrically negative in character. The nucleus--once termed proton--is
all then that we have left of substance. What is it? A mere vortex--an
electrical vortex of nothingness!

"You see, Frank, there is no real substance existing. It is all
vibration. Motion, in other words. Of what? That we do not know. Call
it a motion of disembodied electrical energy. Perhaps it is something
akin to that. But from it, our substantial, tangible, material universe
is built. All dependent upon its vibratory rate. And the measure of
that I would call the Time-dimension. When we alter that--when through
the impulse of a current of vibration we attack that fundamental vortex
to make it whirl at greater or lesser rate--then we, in effect, have
changed the Time-dimension."

There was so much that seemed dimly close to my understanding, and yet
eluded me!

"But," I said, "if you send that little cube back into Time, it will
no longer exist at all. It will be in the past--non-existent now. Or
suppose you send it into the future? It _will exist_ sometime--but now,
it will be non-existent."

"Ah, that's where you're wrong," Brett exclaimed. "Don't you realize
that you're making Time absolute? You're taking yourself and this
present instant as fixed points of Space and Time--the standards
beyond which nothing else can exist. That's fatuous. Frank, look
here, it's simple enough once you grasp it. Time and Space are quite
similar, except that you have never moved about in Time but you have
in Space. Suppose you had not. Suppose--with your present power of
thought--you were this house. You had always been here--always would be
here. Suppose, too, that the world--the land and water--moved slowly
past you, at an unalterable rate. That's what Time does to us. Then
suppose I were to say to you--you as the house--'Let us go now to
Great-London.' That would puzzle you. You would say, 'Great-London was
here a year ago. But now it is gone--non-existent. It did exist--but
now it doesn't.' Or you would say, 'The shore of the Great-Pacific
Ocean will be here next year.' If I said, 'I'm going there now,' you
would reply, 'But you'll be in the future. You'll be non-existent!'
Making yourself the standard of everything. Don't you see how fatuous
that is?"

I did not answer. It was so strange a mode of thought; it made me feel
so insignificant, so enslaved by the fetters of my human senses. And
these fetters Brett was very soon to cast off.


                                  II

Martt said, "Can't we make the tests, Father? There is a frightful lot
to do and it's nearly mid-morning already."

From the table Dr. Gryce took a small rod of the milk-white metal--a
rod half a meter long and the diameter of my smallest finger. He knelt
on the floor beside the taboret, peering into the tiny doorway of the
mechanism he was about to send winging into the distant ages of our
Past. Again we were breathless.

"More light, Frannie," he said. "I can not see inside here." Frannie
illumined the tubes along the ceiling; the room was flooded with their
soft, blue-white light.

"That's better." Rod in hand he turned momentarily to me. "I'm going
to throw the Time-switch by pressing it with this rod," he explained.
"Within the vehicle--the confined space there--the current is equally
felt." He smiled gravely. "Without the rod I should lose a finger to
the Past----"

Carefully he inserted the rod into the doorway. A moment of fumbling,
then I heard a click. The little milk-white model seemed to tremble. It
glowed; from it there came a soft, infinitely small humming sound. It
glowed, melted into translucency--transparency. For an instant I had
a vague sense that a spectral wraith of it was still before me. Then
with a blink of my eyelids I realized that it was gone. The taboret was
empty. Beside it, Dr. Gryce knelt with the rod melted off midway of its
length in his hand.

I breathed again. Brett said softly, "It is gone, Frank. Gone into the
Past, relative to our consciousness of Time. Gone from our senses--yet
it is here--occupying the same Space it did before--but with a
different Time."

He passed his hand through the apparent vacancy above the taboret.
To me then came a realization of how crowded all Space must be! Of
what a tiny fraction of things existent--of events occurring--are we
conscious! That Space over the taboret--empty to me. . . . yet it held
for a mind omniscient an infinity of things strewn through the ages of
the Past and Future. What multiplicity of events--unseen by me--Time
was holding separate in that crowded Space above the taboret!

Dr. Gryce was saying, "Let us test one now by sending it into
smallness--come here, Frank."

He had risen to stand by the table, with another of the models before
him. "This bit of stone," he said. "Let us send it into that."

He laid a flat piece of black-gray, smoothly polished stone on the
table near the model. And with another rod he reached into the doorway.
Again I heard a click. He withdrew the rod. "You see, Frank."

I saw that the rod was slightly compressed along the length he
had inserted. The model was already dwindling. Soundlessly,
untremblingly--it was contracting, becoming smaller, with shape and
aspect otherwise unchanged. Soon it was the size of my fist. Dr. Gryce
picked it up, rested it upon his opened hand. But in a moment it was no
more than a tiny cube rocking in the movement of his palm. He gripped
it gingerly with thumb and forefinger and set it on the polished black
slab of stone. Its milk-white color there showed it clearly. But it
was very small--smaller than the thumb-nail of my little finger. The
cone-shaped tower was a needle-point.

A breathless moment passed. It was now no more than a white speck upon
the black stone surface.

Brett said, "Try the microscope, Frank. You watch it."

I put the low-powered instrument over it; Brett adjusted the light. The
stone was smoothly polished. But now, under the glass, upon a shaggy
mass of uneven rock surface I saw the vehicle visually as large as it
had been originally. But it was dwindling progressively faster. Soon
it lay tilted sidewise upon a slope of the rock; smaller--a tiny speck
clinging there.

"Can you still see it?" Brett murmured.

"Yes--no--now it is gone." The rock seemed empty. Somewhere down
in there the little mechanism lay dwindling. Forever it would grow
smaller. Dwindling into an infinity of smallness; but always to be with
things of its size--and things yet smaller. . . .

As I turned from the glass, I became aware that Martt and Frannie were
not in the room. Dr. Gryce and Brett, absorbed in the test, quite
evidently had not noticed them leave. There had been two other models
on the table--there was now but one.

Then from the garden outside the house a cry reached us. A shout--a cry
of fear--terror. Martt's voice.

"Father! Brett! Help us! Help! Quick!"

       *       *       *       *       *

We rushed from the room.

Crowning wonder, yet horrible! A surge of fear swept me. In the garden
quite near the house stood the other model. Small no longer. It had
grown--_was growing_--until already it was as large as the house
itself. Around it the flowers, shrubs, even a tree had been pushed
and trampled by its expanding bulk. It stood gleaming white in the
sunlight, motionless save for that steady, increasingly rapid growth.
Its windows and doors loomed large dark rectangles; its balcony was
broad as a corridor; its cone tower was already reared higher than the
nearest trees.

"Father! Help!"

At the doorway of the vehicle, standing just outside it, were the
terror-stricken Martt and Frannie. They were holding the end of a long
metallic pole which projected into the doorway. Struggling with its
weight, striving to throw the switch inside.

We reached them. The expanding bulk of the gleaming side of the
vehicle had pushed them back into a thicket of shrubbery. Near them a
tree, uprooted as though it were a straw sticking upright in sand, was
pushed aside and fell with a crash.

Martt and Frannie were livid with terror; breathless, almost exhausted
with their futile efforts.

Martt panted, "We can't--lift the pole! It's--too heavy--too large
inside."

Within the huge doorway, by the sunlight streaming through the windows,
I could see the interior half of the pole, bloated by growth, huge,
heavy.

Brett shoved Frannie away. "Frank! Here--take hold with us."

Dr. Gryce was with us. Together we four men got the interior end of the
pole upon the table inside. A tremendous switch lever was there. But
the pole slipped, rolled down. I expected it to break at the doorway
point where it was so small outside, but it did not. The expanding
doorway had pushed us farther back. Another tree on the other side
fell. Above us the vehicle's tower loomed like a cathedral spire.
Tremendous now, the vehicle had grown until it was almost touching the
house. A fence had been trampled, had vanished beneath its giant bulk.

And the growth was increasingly rapid. If we could not check it . . .
If it got wholly beyond control--this monster, growing . . . forever
growing, to a size infinitely large--larger than our earth itself. . . .

I must have been standing stupidly confused. I heard Dr. Gryce
imploring, "Take hold of it, Frank! We must lift it. We must--our last
chance----"

But Brett pushed us away. "I'm going inside. I can move the switch--let
go of me, Father! That switch--it isn't too big yet--but it will be in
a minute. Let go of me!"

"No! No, Brett! The shock as you went in--you couldn't take it so
suddenly. It might hurt you--kill you. And the switch is too big for
your strength."

It was out of control--this monster, growing, inexorably growing--it
was pushing at the house--a great white giant pushing gently but with
an irresistible power at the little toy house beside it. I could see
the house shifting on its foundations; a corner of it tilted downward.

[Illustration: "The vehicle was out of control, pushing at the house
like a great white giant."]

"Brett! Father! Try it now. One last try." Martt and Frannie had the
pole again in position. With a last despairing effort we raised it;
slid it up over the giant table-edge; caught the wide flaring side of
the giant switch. Pushing--despairingly; five of us, pigmies struggling
there at that giant threshold. The switch moved. Our pole held its
place; the switch moved farther, clicked with a tremendous snap that
reverberated about us. The growth of the monster was checked. It stood
there serene, triumphant, with the little house, tilted, but still
standing bravely beside it.

White, shaken, we ceased our efforts. Frannie gasped, "We--we only
wanted to make it a normal size--so you could load it up with the
furniture and things. But it--it got away from us."

Dr. Gryce said, "It is a lesson--perhaps a lesson which we needed
forced upon us." He gestured to the great quiescent white building
which had spread itself over most of the devastated garden. "A lesson,"
he repeated. "We must guard this power carefully. In unskilled
or unscrupulous hands it is a power for evil almost unthinkable.
This monster here--if it had gotten beyond us--if we had lost its
control--this could destroy the Universe!"




                              _CHAPTER 3_

                        EXPLORERS INTO INFINITY


"You think we've got everything in it?" Frannie asked anxiously.

We had gotten the vehicle back to a size normal to our own stature;
and all day had been working to equip it. The instrument room--its
Space and Time and size mechanisms were complete. I had learned now
that it was to be transported through Space by very similar principles
to those commonly in use--a controlled attraction or repulsion
of the faces of its cube for the heavenly body nearest to it; in
effect, an intensification--a neutralization--or reversal at will of
the electronic force which flows between and mutually attracts all
material bodies; the force which once--in centuries past--was called
gravitation. It needed no word of explanation. Its velocity and
distance dials, its direction indicators, were familiar, though rather
more intricate than those I had seen in the Interplanetary Service.
Beyond that, there was a bank of dials upon which a changing size was
recorded--with the vehicle's present starting dimensions to be the
standard unit. And other dials for its Time-change. Of these there were
two distinct sets. One, a record of the normal Time-change, inevitable
to a change of size; another, a comparison of that Time-distance with
the normal Time-progress of the earth, so that the Time-position of the
vehicle into the earth's Past or Future could be seen.

In a subsidiary instrument-room was a variety of modern astronomical
apparatus; the myrdoscope, and a receiver for an aural ray which, as
a guide to Brett, Dr. Gryce was to send from earth. Of this, in more
detail, they later explained.

In a smaller room were the apparatus for air renewal, the making of
various necessary gases, water and synthetic foods; a store-room
of provisions; rooms furnished comfortably so that the vehicle was
complete in its living quarters. A thousand details, until at the last
I felt as Frannie did--wondering how we could have failed to overlook a
score of things we had intended to do.

It was nightfall when we finished; and all that evening we spent
checking up the equipment. Dr. Gryce's home had not been seriously
damaged by the morning's mishap; and as midnight approached we gathered
in the little observation and instrument room he had built in its upper
story. Brett and Martt, it had been decided, were to make the journey;
we others were to watch and wait. It seemed the more difficult role.
All that evening Dr. Gryce had been increasingly silent, careworn
of manner and aspect. And though Brett was excited in his mature,
repressed fashion--and Martt frankly exuberant--I saw that little
Frannie was solemn, perturbed as her father.

It was a soft, brilliant, cloudless night, with no moon to pale the
gleaming stars. And at last every detail was settled, and the midnight
hour we had set for departure was at hand. We went forth with them to
the waiting vehicle. There was nothing more to say. They stood--Brett
and Martt--in the opened doorway as we gathered about them.

"Well--good-bye, Father--good-bye, Frannie dear." Brett held her close;
then released her, pushed her away. "Good-bye, Frank." His hand-clasp
was warm and steady.

Martt was jocular, but now at the last I could hear a tremble to his
voice. "When we get to that girl out there--well, I'm going to tell her
how interested you all are in her." His laugh was high-pitched. "That
is, if we can handle that giant."

"Good-bye, Brett. Good-bye, Martt."

Our words were so futile, so inadequate to the surge of feeling within
us! The door slid closed upon them. The vehicle, not to change size
until it was far into the realms of outer interstellar Space, beyond
our crowding little planets--lifted gently, soared upward, slid away
from us, a glistening white shape up there in the quiet starlight.

Gravely, silently, with what sinking of heart I could only imagine, Dr.
Gryce stood regarding it. Beside me Frannie was crying softly.

Explorers into infinity! And they were gone, to encounter--what?




                              _CHAPTER 4_

                             THE WATCHERS


We spent the rest of that night in the little observation room on the
upper story of Dr. Gryce's home; with him and Frannie beside me I sat
watching the vehicle's flight through the electro-telescope. It was
not a high-powered instrument, but it served. I could see the vehicle
plainly as it passed through our atmosphere and out into Space. A tiny
blob with darker rectangles of windows.

Dr. Gryce sat with instruments, charts and his computations before
him. Occasionally he would ask me for the vehicle's position; and I
would give him the points and clock the time with all the accuracy
of which I was capable. He seemed solemn, perturbed no longer; the
scientist in him was all-absorbing. He said once with satisfaction,
"Brett is competent--the boy hasn't varied a hair from my directions."

I knew that he and Brett had picked up the image of the girl and
her assailants within a month past; and that Brett had accurate
calculations which he could follow until able to capture the image on
his own instruments.

"How long will it take them to get there?" I asked. "When will they be
back? You said within a few days. How long?" Dr. Gryce looked up from
his work with a faint smile. "There's no answer to that, Frank. Without
a change of their time it might take them to reach that realm out there
a thousand years or a million years--the vehicle's maximum velocity we
do not know--that they are to find out."

"A million years! And another million to come back!"

His smile broadened. "As we measure Time, yes. But they will change
their Time-rate; the trip may seem to them only a few days."

"But," I persisted, "two million years of our Time! And we can not
change our Time."

"No, Frank. But you speak thoughtlessly. Brett can return to any point
in our Time he wishes. Not with exactitude--but, we hope, within a few
days. They will return here--within that Time we have agreed."

Frannie's face was very solemn though she said nothing; and I knew then
that she was wondering if her brothers would be able to keep their
promise.

Dr. Gryce rose from his chair. "I must adjust the aural ray--Brett may
need it."

He had already explained this ray. A device similar to the familiar
aurometer by which the aural power of the earth is measured. He had
perfected an instrument for projecting into Space the invisible aura of
the earth--projecting it in a tiny, very intense beam. An instrument
for visualizing its characteristic bands was in the vehicle. They hoped
that the ray might reach out into distant, interstellar Space; a flash
of it crossing the sky as our earth rotated. And, coming back, Brett
would see it, recognize it. A guide, as he came back from beyond all
the universes strewn there throughout the magnitude of Space. If it
could reach out there--if he saw it. My heart sank at the thoughts,
doubts, which rushed upon me.

Dr. Gryce set his aural projector, with its ray, invisible to the naked
eye, flashing after the vehicle. Silently he returned to his seat.

"Can you see them? You can still see them, Frank?" Frannie turned to me
with anxious face.

I could still see the vehicle. But faintly, for faster than any mail
flyer it was winging its way outward. Mars--approaching its closest
point to the earth now to bring a deluge of the Martian Mails--red Mars
at midnight had been above us. The vehicle had gone that way; and now,
visually beside the planet, they were sinking together in the western
sky. The stars were paling with the coming dawn. The east flushed with
it, and presently I could see the vehicle no longer.

And as I turned from my instrument, I heard Dr. Gryce. "Why Frannie,
girl! You're worn out! Come, it's dawn--they've vanished."

Little Frannie had fallen asleep.




                              _CHAPTER 5_

                              THE RETURN


We did not sight the vehicle the next night; it had seemingly passed
beyond range of my instrument. With the myrdoscope we hoped to catch
it, but could not. The night following was overcast with clouds. But
we remained awake; Dr. Gryce seemed to feel that his sons might be
returning. It was pathetic to me, observing him quietly slipping away
from us at intervals to wander among the wreckage of his garden, gazing
anxiously upward.

A week and still they had not come. What Dr. Gryce said to my Director
I do not know; but he told me the Director was satisfied to have me
remain away until my present business was finished. I had determined as
much for myself. Not all the Directors in the Service could have taken
me away from here, with Brett and Martt unheard from.

Like a beacon day and night we made sure that our aural ray was
flashing its beam. But would Brett see it?

Another week. Still no sign. Doubts, fears, terrors assailed us.
Were we watching, waiting futilely for what would never come? The
thought was in my mind--and I knew it was in the minds of Dr. Gryce and
Frannie--but never once did we voice it. Had Brett and Martt, perhaps,
returned to our Past? With mechanism impaired, had they landed here in
what we now called the Past--landed to find a wilderness of roaming
savages? Or to find this little Space we now called a house and garden,
a barren icy waste with men no more than beasts upon it? Or landed
here in our Future? Ourselves dead, gone and forgotten? A great city
here on this spot, perchance, with strange people and strange ways and
nothing remaining of the loved ones they sought? Or were they lost and
wandering in Space? Out there among myriad starry Universes hopeless to
find our infinitesimal Solar System? Or lost perhaps in Time, wandering
through the eons searching for the little centuries, years, days that
identified their goal?

Or, again, perhaps they had safely reached that outer realm? Perhaps,
once there, something had happened to prevent their return? In what
we now called the Present, perhaps they were out there, transfixed,
just as to our vision that strange girl and her strange assailants
were transfixed--stricken of motion, with a passing of Time to us
insensible. Transfixed out there now, to take no more than a few
breaths, to move a hand, no more, during all the span of our own tiny
lives?


                                  II

I was sitting early one evening near the monight hour, alone with
Frannie in the observation room. Dr. Gryce, in the room adjoining, had
fallen asleep, worn by repressed anxiety and his now almost day and
night vigil. We were talking in half-whispers; and abruptly Frannie
voiced the fear that possessed us all.

"Oh, Frank, can't you see them? Please, you must! Oh, I'm afraid
they're never coming back. Never--coming back."

It sounded so horrible. "Hush, Frannie. You mustn't say things like
that." I put my arm around her, and suddenly like a child she flung
herself to me; sobbed, and clung to me.

"Hush, Frannie. Don't cry--please don't cry. I'll look again. I might
see them now. I'll try to."

I drew away from her; went back to my instrument. I had in mind to try
the myrdoscope, but all our efforts with it during the two weeks past
had been unavailing. It was a calm, clear evening. A broadly crescent
moon was falling into the west. Mars was well above the eastern
horizon; through the electro-telescope I looked that way. My circular
field was empty. Frannie was checking her sobs, interested with hope
renewed.

"Don't you see them, Frank?"

"No--not yet--_Yes_! I see them! Frannie, I see them!"

From visually above the red planet, out of nothingness a huge shape
suddenly materialized. It had not been there an instant before; it
seemed for the space of a thought, a transparent ghost of the vehicle;
solidifying until even before I had told Frannie, I was aware that I
saw it there. The vehicle unmistakable.

"They've come, Frannie! I see them! Call your father. Dr. Gryce!
They've come! They're safe!"

How my heart leaped to be able to say it! Frannie was calling; and Dr.
Gryce, no more than half awake, repeating, "They've come? They're in
sight? They're safe?"

This gentle old man, how full of thankfulness his heart must have been!
He came stumbling into the room. "Where are they, Frank? You can see
them, lad?"

I could see them indeed--plainly, for abruptly I realized that they
were no farther than just beyond the earth's atmosphere. And I could
see also the conventional vane flying at horizontal above the vehicle's
tower to denote that all was well within. They had come. They were safe.

They landed in the garden. Like a wafting feather the vehicle floated
down under Brett's skilled guidance. It was of a size seemingly
identical with the one it had upon departure, but evidence of its trip
was everywhere visible. Its gleaming milk-white color was dulled. Its
sides were pitted and scarred--the metal burned. A lower corner seemed
fused into a shapeless lump.

The door slid open as we crowded forward. My heart was pounding. A
sudden, irrelevant thought leaped to me--a thought, hope, that they
might have brought back with them that strangely beautiful girl they
had gone to rescue. A thought abruptly, fiercely poignant--yet with
it a consciousness of its whimsicality that I--Frank Elgon--who loved
Frannie Gryce, should be possessed of such incongruous desire.

The door was open. Brett and Martt--queerly garbed to seem almost
strangers--were crowding there, with no one else behind them. But
already I had forgotten the girl. Frannie's glad cries of welcome rang
out; and Dr. Gryce's tremulous greeting; and I heard my own voice,
strangely calm, "Well! Brett--Martt--you got back safely, didn't you?
I'm so glad--we're all so glad!"




                              _CHAPTER 6_

                 THE FLIGHT INTO TIME, SIZE AND SPACE


They seemed not tired, but undoubtedly they were hungry, famished; and
before they would say a word of those strange things we knew they had
to tell, they made us feed them. "Regular food," as Martt laughingly
called it. "By the code! We've eaten for months weird things supposed
to be edible. My digestion is ruined."

Months! They had been gone two weeks and two days into a realm where
those little sixteen days were no more than a tiny fraction of a
second! Yet they spoke of months! It was very strange.

"Frannie! _Don't_ ask me that again." Martt affectionately tweaked her
chin. "We found her, I tell you. Wait till we've had supper--you'll
hear."

They ate with the relish of those long deprived of accustomed food; and
as we sat with them, forbearing to ask the eager questions flooding
us, again I had that impression of the strangeness which had come to
them. It was not only their manner of dress, though that of itself was
extraordinary. They wore shirts of a colored cloth with a high rolling
collar in front, low and open in back. Short trousers that were queerly
wide and flapping at the knee, stockings that seemed of a soft gray
leather and long-pointed shoes of a material I could not name. Over
the shirt a short jacket, wide-shouldered and with sleeves that puffed
and flared; and a skirt to it at the waist which rolled upward. Their
hats--which Frannie rescued from the vehicle--were solidly wooden of
aspect, with low circular crowns and triangular stiff brims.

The garb seemed grotesque; yet they took it so as a matter of course
when once we ceased our comments--and they were so easy in it, so
unconscious of it--that abruptly I realized it was my own viewpoint
that held the strangeness. Between them, also, there was a difference
of aspect--a rationality to their characters. The colors of their
garments materially differed. Brett's clothes were more sober--less
vivid, less extreme. His shirt was a somber brown; Martt's was a
glaring green. Martt's jacket had additional bangles fastened to
its cloth, it rolled higher in the skirt; tassels depended from his
elbows longer than those Brett wore. His jacket sleeves were fuller;
his trousers flared more, and were a more brilliant hue. But I will
say that when after a time I became in a measure accustomed to his
looks, Martt was very handsome; and he carried himself with a sort of
swinging, debonair grace and swagger wholly attractive.

They were strangers to us in their mode of dress; no one regarding
them could have named a nation of earth or any of the habited planets
from which they might have come. Yet the strangeness went deeper than
their clothes. They seemed older. A vague aspect of command seemed upon
them--especially did it envelop Brett, like an aura sensed but not
seen. Martt's old jocularity was unchanged; no dignity, no reservation,
no aloofness with us had been added to the new swagger. Yet beneath
his laughter there seemed always a hidden solemnity. And then I saw
it all--this subtle strangeness that clung to them--I saw it lurking
in their eyes. Memories mirrored there; memories of things no man had
seen and felt before. Eyes--and more especially Brett's eyes--which had
seen, perhaps, too much.


                                  II

It was Brett who began their narrative; began it with the slow,
careful, precise phrasing of the scientist anxious to avoid error of
memory; to be exact of every fact and detail. On his lap he held a book
of notes, and another book of the many dial recordings. He consulted it.

"Our recorded time of starting was four minutes past midnight. Sixteen
days ago, wasn't it, Father? Sixteen!"

He gave a queer laugh but did not comment upon his thoughts. "I had
determined to start slowly. Martt would have rushed us, but I thought
that caution was best until we were quite sure of the workings of these
mechanisms new to us.

"I did not record our passing above the earth's atmosphere. But the
vehicle was inordinately hot from the friction of our passage. Perhaps
I took it too fast--at all events we did not bother with refrigeration
since in Space we would so soon need the heaters. We sat sweltering at
the main instrument table with the dials before us.

"I think, Father, that I followed your instructions carefully. The
dials were all set and operating. The size-dials stood motionless at
unit 1. Our relative Time-dials were motionless at the original unit of
earth Time; and the earth dial-chronometers ticked off the passing of
your seconds and minutes. On the Space-dials--when first I chanced to
notice them--we had gone some 900 miles. Our velocity then had picked
up to 1,500 miles an hour and was swiftly accelerating. The Time was 1
a.m.

"It is slow getting through the atmosphere, but now we were fairly on
our way. As you suggested, Father, I was heading just a point off Mars
where I could hold Jupiter and Saturn almost in a line ahead of us.
They were all there visible through our floor window--we had turned
over and were falling toward them. I was using a fraction only of the
earth's repulsion, and holding steady with the selective attraction of
Mars and the star-field behind it."

"We saw your aural ray," Martt put in. He was earnestly intent upon
Brett's narrative. "We saw it--I saw it--through the spectrometer. The
swing of it was apparent even at that near distance. And we saw the
Martian Mail coming in--they landed in Eurasia that night, I suppose.
Say, they move in a hurry, don't they? And stop in a hurry when they
get down close."

Brett went on: "We were still within the lower cone of the earth's
shadow. But presently we emerged and came into the sunlight. The
brilliant blackness of Space; and the cold by now had penetrated so
that very soon we were glad enough to use the heaters.

"You know the details of a Martian voyage, Father. And you, Frank? This
was no different except that having no necessity of stopping I reached
a greater velocity than they generally obtain. A forty-hour trip, isn't
it, Frank?"

"There's nearly always one of the minimum-distance trips at about
that," I answered. "But you had some sixty million miles for yours.
That's a lot longer than a minimum distance."

He nodded. "Yes. We came abreast of Mars--I suppose about a million
miles away. Our Space-dials showed about sixty-two million miles
traveled. We had been gone from you thirty-nine hours. Our average
velocity had been something over a million and a half miles an hour,
and with steadily increasing acceleration had reached then nearly three
million an hour.

"That was as quick a trip as you anticipated, Father? But even so, we
found it irksome. We alternated at the instrument board. Martt prepared
most of the meals--beyond that and sleeping there was little to do.
Except to watch for asteroids; but the mails have reported the region
through there remarkably free of them this season. We saw none inside
the Martian orbit closer than a million miles, which to such a low
velocity as ours held no danger."

Dr. Gryce asked, "The air purifiers, Brett? You had no trouble?"

"No. Or very little, except just at first with the chlorate of
potassium. I was telling you about passing Mars. We saw it rising
slowly past us--saw it through a side window. A huge crescent, the
sunlight on half its disk, but even the unlighted portion was plainly
outlined. Above us was the thin crescent earth, with the sun behind it.
The tongues of flame in the sun's envelope were plainer than I had ever
seen them. We were falling away from the earth and sun, into the inky
blackness of Space with its blazing white stars.

"During all this first portion of the trip we were eager to get more
quickly advanced. Beyond Neptune's orbit, with the Solar System once
behind us, we would feel like explorers, even though Nogar--he holds
the record, doesn't he?--went once 27,000 million miles out."

Dr. Gryce put in: "His record was 27,600 million miles from our sun.
At nearly five million miles an hour, which was his maximum velocity
obtainable, that trip for the full return passage consumed--I think the
total time was 461 days."

Brett went on, "That was the record. But even to go a single light-year
at that velocity would have taken Nogar around 84 years--just going out
a little light-year of distance, to say nothing of getting back! And we
had so many thousands of light-years to travel even to get beyond the
stars. It seemed stupendous--impossible."

"Naturally," said Dr. Gryce. "Impossible, of course, had you held to
that size." They were directing their explanations at me. I nodded.
"But you didn't stay that size?" I suggested.

"No, of course not," said Brett. "But for a time, we did--I was
cautious from Mars to Jupiter, Father. Nogar plunged right through the
asteroid region there--plunged through at nearly his five million
miles an hour velocity. I held down to three million. We kept a close
watch, though Martt had a somewhat terrifying experience. Tell them,
Martt."

Martt flushed a trifle. "It wasn't my fault--at least I didn't think
so. At a velocity like that the space there between the orbits of
Mars and Jupiter is horribly crowded. Brett was asleep. I sat by the
instrument table staring down into the floor window at the black
firmament into which we were dropping. You people take a voyage like
this as a matter of course--but it was my first time off earth, and the
beauty of it--of the heavens--well, I tell you it impressed me. The
black firmament--those blazing constellations beneath us--the full moon
of Jupiter every moment growing larger like a white round lamp down
there.

"Well, anyway, perhaps, I was lost in thoughts of it--when leaping
up out of the blackness came a great round silver disk. A hundred
times the size of our full moon. Then a thousand. It was below me,
but off to one side. It swept past, so close I could see its barren,
rocky surface--a range of desolate gray mountains; and I could see,
too, its rotation, like a ball tossed into the air slowly rotating.
Before I could think to do anything--even to make a move--the asteroid
went past, out of my field as I looked through the floor window. For
a moment I saw it rising past a side window and then it was above
us--gone completely beyond my sight in a moment or two. I want to tell
you I was frightened--I called Brett down at once."

Brett laughed. "I found him white, shaking like a tower-trembler.
If a collision had really threatened, he could have thrown the main
Time-switch. Thrown us suddenly into the asteroid's past or future--I
had told him that--but when the danger came, he never thought of it."

"I never did," Martt confessed.

"How close did the asteroid pass?" I asked. "I saw one once, on a
Martian trip----"

"I suppose we passed it at a distance of some three thousand miles,"
Brett answered. "But at three million miles an hour we were traveling
that distance in three or four seconds. It was a narrow escape. The
asteroid's attraction had drawn us aside from our course--but I soon
rectified that."

"I meant to explain about attraction a moment ago, Frank," Dr. Gryce
interrupted. "The attraction of the vehicle on our planets is why
Brett could not yet increase his size. Jupiter and Saturn were pulling
the vehicle onward, and in direct proportion to the mass, of course,
the vehicle was pulling at them. An infinitesimal pull--but had Brett
increased its size materially--while still close to our planets--the
vehicle would have been a seriously disturbing element. I did not want
that. Indeed, with any great size-increase, the vehicle moving out
there would have thrown our whole system into chaos."

Brett said, "I was careful to obey you, Father. We were safely
beyond Saturn--and Uranus and Neptune were on the other side of the
sun--before I even touched the size-switch. From the orbit of Mars to
that of Jupiter there are some 334 million miles between the points
we crossed. We were about 112 hours making the voyage. I kept us well
away--some ten million miles. But the planet was a beautiful sight,
assuming every phase from full to crescent as we passed. You have never
been so close, Father? Nor you, Frank?"

"Nor I," spoke up Frannie. She said it in a whimsical fashion of
pathos, as though to make us all realize that she had been neglected.

Brett laughed affectionately. "No, nor you, little sister. Well, it's
a beautiful sight. You can see it similarly in the telescope, but
somehow, at the same visual distance the naked eye shows it indefinably
different. A beautiful silver disk with the broad dark bands upon it
and the red spot glowing like a lantern in its lower hemisphere.

"Our velocity was slackened for a time as we passed Jupiter, since
I had to lose its great attractive force and turn a neutral side to
it. But once by it, with it blazing as a gigantic thin crescent above
us, I used a full power of its repulsion. We gained velocity rapidly.
With the region of minor planets passed I had no fear of using all the
velocity we could obtain. I think Nogar was unskilful in the handling
of his vehicle; at all events, before we reached the neighborhood of
Saturn, we had attained a velocity of seven and a half million miles an
hour. It was the greatest velocity we reached."

"But," I exclaimed, "but Brett, at seven and one-half million miles
an hour, in your whole life-time--whether you changed your Time-rate
or not, you would have to live those hours--in a whole life-time at
that velocity you wouldn't get one-quarter of the distance even to the
nearest star!"

"No," he agreed. "But I began using the size-change after we passed
Saturn----"

I interrupted again. "I've been wondering about that--I don't quite
see----"

"I'll make it clear to you, Frank, in a moment," Dr. Gryce put in. "Go
on, Brett."

"We were well past Saturn before I changed our size at all. Our average
velocity along there was six million miles an hour--it was a run of
about seventy-five hours. We would have been--even at our maximum of
seven and one-half million miles an hour--more than another 240 hours
getting past Neptune's orbit. It was too tedious. We determined, since
Uranus and Neptune were in other parts of their orbits--far on the
other side of our sun--I decided that once we were well beyond Saturn,
I would start our increase of size. We were seventy million miles
beyond Saturn, with nothing of importance ahead of us but the distant
stars, when I determined to start the change. The space there was
comparatively deserted--a few asteroids--sometimes we could go nearly
an hour without even sighting one.

"With Martt beside me--we were both a little timid about it,
naturally--I threw over the switch and started our growth."

He paused for the length of a breath. "It was extraordinary--all our
experience of the voyage from that moment was extraordinary. I hardly
know how to begin telling you. . . ."


                                  III

Dr. Gryce interrupted. "Just a minute, Brett--I want to make absolutely
clear to Frank the principles involved in this change of size in
relation to velocity."

"May I ask a question first?" I hazarded.

"All you like," said Brett.

"I'm wondering why in your normal size you could attain no greater
velocity than seven and one-half million miles an hour. Theoretically,
you know, a freely falling body will accelerate to infinity. And
with repulsion added--a body, not only falling, but being _pushed_
downward----"

Frannie said, "Nogar found his approximate limit at five million----"

"Our limitations were similar to his," Martt put in.

"I know," I said. "I remember in the public newscasting they said----"

"We found the same conditions," Brett put in. "Our vehicle--any vehicle
traveling in outer Space--is not strictly a freely falling body. For
low velocities--the general voyaging from here to Mercury, Venus or
Mars--Space may almost be considered a vacuum. But it is not a vacuum,
as we know. The imponderable, widely separated atoms of the ether--to
use the ancient word--begin to be a factor at velocities over three
million miles an hour. The drag became increasingly noticeable----"

"And the heat of the friction warmed us up," Martt put in. "At six
million miles an hour we were hot, let me tell you. Sweltering--even
with the full refrigeration units going."

"That friction held us to seven and one-half million as our limit,"
Brett added. "Anything else, Frank?"

"Yes, I was wondering about our aural ray here. Could you still see it?"

"Oh yes. Our sun of the Solar System had dwindled--small, but white
and brilliant. With the naked eye the little star which was our earth
showed very faint but distinguishable. With the aurometer--even using
its spreading field of vision so that it embraced all that portion of
the sky--we could see your beam sweeping slowly across the field as the
earth rotated."

"And the myrdoscope?" I suggested. "Hadn't you tried again to locate
the image of that girl?" My heart thumped as I said it.

He nodded. "Beyond Jupiter, when the long hours of inactivity hung on
us, I spent many of them searching ahead of us with the myrdoscope. At
last I picked up the image of the girl--held it for a few moments."

"There was no change?" Dr. Gryce said eagerly.

"No. The little distance we had traveled made no change--in fact, my
smaller instrument, Father, showed it rather less clearly."

"I mean no change in the girl's attitude," Dr. Gryce insisted. "No
change in the attacking giant--or those grinning little dwarfs at the
girl's ankle?"

"None. But she was aware of them. On her face was stark terror--as
we had seen it from here, Father, a month before. I noticed that the
giant's forward step had nearly been completed--and the climbing dwarf
was holding tightly to her sandal cord."

Brett gazed at me inquiringly but I shook my head. "That's all I have
to ask," I said. "Go ahead, Brett. You were telling us about how you
started the size-change----"

Dr. Gryce put in. "I think you had best proceed, Brett. And then if
there is anything Frank does not understand, we can stop and make it
clear."

He nodded, but for a moment he hesitated. "I flung over the switch to
start our growth," he said slowly. "It was the beginning of all those
strangely weird experiences which followed now one upon the other.
Frightening at first. . . ."


                                  IV

He paused briefly, then went on: "Our first sensation was one of
shock--a reeling of the senses. But it was not severe--it passed almost
at once. We found ourselves clinging there to the instrument table.
To me the room seemed swaying dizzily. My forehead was damp with cold
moisture; a nausea possessed me. I was oppressed; the air of the room
was heavy to breathe."

"The air was snapping with the current," said Martt. "I could see it,
and feel it tingling against my face. And it was heavy to breathe, as
Brett says."

Brett resumed: "But we felt better after a moment. I saw the change
first on the dials. The pointer of the lowest unit dial of the size
series was slowly but visibly moving. I watched as it crept from 1 to
2. We had doubled in size. I gazed about the room. It was unchanged;
and now as my body rapidly adjusted itself to the new conditions, I
began to feel almost normal. Except a queer whirring in my head, and
the nausea which persisted for perhaps an hour, I felt no evidence
of the growth. The room, the vehicle was untrembling. No slightest
evidence within the vehicle of the size-change going on--except the
creeping pointer of the lowest dial. It was moving faster; it had
reached 10. The pointer of the dial beside it--registering in units of
a hundred--now seemed stirring."

Brett gazed at us earnestly. "I want to make myself absolutely clear.
We were then--I suppose a minute or so had elapsed--we were ten times
our original size----"

"Much faster than the vehicle grew in the garden," I exclaimed.

"Yes. I had chanced the possibility of severe shock and thrown the
lever at once to a quarter strength. Martt and Frannie, in the garden,
had put it on only to the one-hundredth part of its power. At all
intensities, the growth, you understand, constantly accelerates.
At unit 10, which we reached in possibly the first minute, we were
ten times our starting size--that is, for earth measurements, our
vehicle from base to tower-top was then one-tenth of a mile. But
soon the pointer had passed 50. And then 100--and the pointer of the
hundred-unit dial had crept to 1.

"With recovered normality of senses we had gone to the windows. I
want you to visualize first what always before we had seen. An
inky black void everywhere surrounding us, in the center of which
seemingly we hung motionless. The brilliant firmament of stars, freed
from the distortion of earth's atmosphere; glittering, blazing like
great diamonds. Pure white, blue-white, or tinged with yellow and
red. The whole extent of the heavens swarming with them. The huge,
spiral nebulous masses fleecy white, with tiny points of blazing
white fire in them. And behind them all that distant ring of seeming
star-dust--immeasurably distant yet glowing like a silver veil, which
in the ancient books they called the 'Milky Way.'

"Near at hand, above us were the tiny planets of our Solar System. The
sun, only a pale white disk from out here near Saturn; the earth--a
star very faint; red Mars, a tiny reddish dot. But Jupiter was
brilliant; and Saturn from our proximity was stupendously beautiful.
The globe itself--a great silver disk, with the sunlight to make a
narrow portion of it into a blazing crescent. The darkened areas of the
globe, even on the shadowed portion, were plain almost as the bands of
Jupiter. And Saturn's rings! Concentric rings--the inner one a trifle
darker--opened up to a narrow angle--a glowing silver band like a broad
hat-brim encircling the planet--a hat-brim over 37,000 miles broad.

[Illustration: "Saturn with its rings was stupendously beautiful from
our proximity."]

"This we saw, with ourselves of unchanging size. But now we were
growing. The change was at first apparent only in the aspect of
Saturn--since it was closest to us. The planet seemed to become a
little smaller--shrinking and creeping toward us. A contraction of its
size--and as though the space between us were diminishing. Yet--as
a seeming paradox--the visual diameter of the globe and the rings
remained almost the same.

"It is difficult to describe. We seemed moving closer to Saturn, yet
in no sense was there any apparent motion. The effect--the result--of
seeming motion--not the motion itself. Martt presently went back to
watch the dials. He called out to me when we had reached unit 1,000. A
thousand times our original size--the vehicle now ten miles in earthly
height. The change had now affected very slightly the entire firmament.
Everywhere a seeming contraction--not so much in the aspect of the
blazing star-points, but in the black void of Space itself. As though
the void were smaller--contracted so that everything in it were of
necessity a little nearer to us. But it was as yet barely noticeable. I
might even have thought it a psychological co-action with the change in
Saturn's aspect--a change unmistakable.

"Saturn, as we grew, had been seemingly smaller and coming visually
nearer to us. Yet our velocity away from it was--in our original
size--seven and one-half million miles an hour. Can I make you realize
that the effect of _both_ motions was apparent? It was as though we
were moving forward to lengthen a dwindling distance, with Saturn
following after us simultaneously to shorten it.

"It was at the thousand unit point--ourselves then ten miles of earthly
height--that I shut off the size-switch. Of visual diameter, Saturn had
really not altered materially."

Brett stopped as though carefully to choose his words. "I'm striving
to give you a clear picture. A distant object of great size may
appear of the same diameter as something smaller and closer. But
you can generally tell which is which. There is a difference of
aspect--impossible to describe, but readily seen. Saturn was like
that--the change in the planet was like a progressive change from
the one condition to the other. It had appeared large and distant;
it changed, to be smaller and closer. Just before I shut off the
size-switch, when our rate of growth had become comparatively rapid,
Saturn took on other motions--I'll tell you about them in a moment.

"Do I make myself clear? I want to. . . . With our growth checked,
there was at once a striking, visual result. We seemed receding from
Saturn so fast that its apparent diameter dwindled very rapidly--a
normal dwindling of rapidly added distance. Presently it was a mere
star--then a pin-point of light. Then it was vanished. Our other
planets of the Solar System had preceded Saturn into invisibility. Then
our sun itself became so faint a star that I lost it. We were beyond
the Solar System--itself wholly lost to the naked eye among the great
star-clusters enveloping it."


                                   V

"Wait," I exclaimed. "There is so much I want to ask you, Brett."

Frannie interposed timidly: "Did you say, Brett, that on earth the
vehicle then would have been ten miles in height?"

"Yes," he agreed.

She commented, "Then your relative Time-dials must have been visibly
moving----"

Dr. Gryce hastily interrupted: "The practical workings of the inherent
Time-change I want Brett to explain carefully. You did not move the
vehicle in Time, did you, Brett?"

"No sir. Not then."

I must have looked puzzled, for Dr. Gryce added: "We mean, Frank, that
the vehicle could have traveled in Time--in earth-Time, for instance,
to go into our past or our future. Brett had not done that. But
immediately the vehicle started a size-change, you understand, there
automatically began a Time-change inherent to that growth. Normal to
it, let me say."

"Oh, yes," I nodded. "I remember you explained that. In relation to its
size----"

"I'll put it this way," Dr. Gryce went on. "That girl out there is
moving through Time at a definite rate. Let us say a year of our Time
would be measured as a second of hers."

"Less than that," Martt interjected.

"Yes lad, I know. But those rough figures will serve for the present
comparison." He turned back to me. "Keep that in mind, Frank. Now
conceive Brett and Martt changing progressively upward in size, from
what they are here on earth, to a size normal to that girl and the
realm she lives in. A corresponding Time-change must take place. At
every point of the voyage in Time and size, the relative values must
agree; the vehicle's Time-rate always must be in inverse proportion to
its position in size."

I nodded. "I think I understand. You mean that when in size the vehicle
had progressed half-way from our size to the girl's, that then the
vehicle's normal Time-rate would be half-way between our Time and hers?"

"Exactly, Frank."

"At this ten-mile size what percentage of the size-journey had been
made?" I asked. I smiled. "I'm trying to imagine how large that girl
may be."

Brett said quickly, "I'll tell you that later. It was some distance
farther on before I could calculate such relative values even as
approximations."

Frannie said, "At that point, Brett, the vehicle began speeding into
the earth's future, didn't it?"

Dr. Gryce exclaimed: "Child, that will only lead us into philosophical
discussion. Beyond the realm of mathematics----"

"I don't think so, Father," Brett said quietly. "I would say that
since everything--Size, Time and Space--is relative, depending
wholly on the viewpoint of the observer--that Frannie's question is
simple enough. To me as observer--to my consciousness there in the
vehicle--every given instant was the Present. The earth was out there
in Space, revolving about its sun; rotating on its axis--its movements
to my consciousness _faster_ than before. To me it was the Present.
The earth was there. I saw it through the electro-telescope. I also
saw your aural ray through the aurometer. The ray swept the sky with
a rapid sweep, since to my altered Time-rate the earth was rotating
faster. But every given instant was my Present.

"However, compare my consciousness to yours on earth. The
earth--rotating faster relative to me--had, while I watched there,
made, let us say, a full rotation in that first five minutes of my
vigil. Relative to me--it was the earth's future Time. I was gazing
upon earth in its _tomorrow_. So I think that I was, as Frannie said,
speeding into the earth's future."

Frannie was triumphant. Dr. Gryce said smilingly, "You put it
clearly, Brett. But it's a philosophical and metaphysical viewpoint
nevertheless. You spoke of Saturn's having another apparent motion near
the end of your size-change?"

"Yes," said Brett. "As our Time-rate became materially slower, the
speeding up of all the motions inherent to the planets grew visible.
Saturn's rotation on its axis became readily visible through the
telescope. And the globe began very slowly shifting sidewise--at nearly
right angles to our course--the visual result of the intensification of
its orbital movement. . . . You were going to ask a question, Frank, a
moment ago?"

I had not forgotten it. "You were telling us, Brett, how you stopped
your growth at the ten-mile size. Almost immediately, you said, Saturn
receded into an invisibility of distance. The entire Solar System
vanished into distance. You had been traveling only seven and one-half
million miles an hour before changing size. It was the new velocity I
wanted to ask about. The whole question of velocity relative to size."

"Relative!" Brett exclaimed. "That's the keynote to it, Frank. Two
differing viewpoints, always. Keep them both in mind--the viewpoint
of earth-size, and the viewpoint of the vehicle-size. I'll try and
explain it now. Once clear to you, our whole experience will clarify to
your understanding. Conceive, from your external viewpoint of earth,
the vehicle out there in Space dropping with a velocity of seven and
one-half million miles an hour. That was its maximum, owing to the
ether-friction. It started to increase in size. Hence its mass grew--in
proportion directly as the cube. As the mass grew greater, the atoms
of the ether became of themselves relatively smaller, less ponderable,
less capable of exerting their frictional drag.

"This should be very clear to you, Frank. In a vacuum, a feather
and a bit of lead fall at equal rates. The mass--the weight--has
nothing to do with it. But in air--where there is a friction--the
heavier object falls faster. The vehicle was like that. Its mass, so
enormously increased, gave it a greatly increased maximum velocity. It
picked up velocity rapidly with its growth. The formulas involved are
intricate--I need only say that after forty-nine minutes of traveling
at the ten-mile size, we had again reached maximum. It was about 200
million miles a minute."

"A minute!" I exclaimed.

"Yes. That is 12,000 million miles an hour, as against seven and
one-half million. The vehicle's length, breadth and width had each
increased to a thousand times their former size. Its mass was the
product of the three--hence one thousand million times greater.

"These are all approximate to the actual figures, you understand. Round
numbers are less confusing. Our resultant velocity, however, was 200
million miles a minute, at the end of the first hour. We were well
beyond the Solar System by then."

Frannie asked, "Brett, why didn't Saturn appear to recede until after
you had stopped your growth?"

"That was merely optical, Frannie. Our velocity away from Saturn was
steadily increasing. But with our increasing size, the space seemed
dwindling--as though Saturn were following after us. With the growth
checked there was a visual reaction--an apparent leaping away. It was
merely optical. Anything else?"

"I'd like to know," I said, "the relation of your Time in the vehicle
at the ten-mile size--its relation to our earth-Time."

"The proportion of one to one thousand," he answered readily. "Seven
seconds to me, then, was about two hours on earth. Could I have seen
the earth when I reached that maximum, it would have made a complete
rotation on its axis--a day of yours--in a minute and twenty-four
seconds to me.

"It's all clear, isn't it? Suppose I go back to the details of our
trip? With ten miles of earthly size, at a velocity of 200 million
miles a minute we were dropping into the black void of Space. The Solar
System was lost presently, even to telescopic vision, but with the
naked eye the firmament of stars was very little changed. I searched
with the myrdoscope for the image of the girl, but did not chance to
pick it up. We were hot again within the vehicle, from the ether
friction--as hot as we had been before.

"Beneath us, in the star-field for which I was heading, was Alpha
Centauri. It is, as you know, one of the very closest stars to our
Solar System--to our earth. In miles, roughly some 25,000,000,000,000.
Four and a third light-years of distance, 4.35 light-years to be exact.
At 200 million miles a minute we would have been some eighty-eight days
getting there."

"I couldn't have stood a trip so long," Martt exclaimed. "I told him
we'd have to increase our size again. Nearly three months to get to the
nearest star--with others a thousand times farther on!"

"There was no reason for us to stay so small," Brett agreed. "Out
there, with the Solar System so far away, I had no fear of disturbing
it."

Again I interrupted. "Brett, the vehicle's velocity was then much
greater than the velocity of light----"

"About eighteen times greater."

"It seems inconceivable," I added. "Impossible for any tangible entity
in Space to attain such velocity."

"Ah, but Frank, that's where you're using the wrong viewpoint," Dr.
Gryce exclaimed warmly. "You're still imagining yourself an observer on
earth. But take the viewpoint of the vehicle. Space was proportionately
smaller than before. Brett gives you the earth-size figures in order to
avoid confusion. From the vehicle's enlarged viewpoint, Brett, what was
its comparative velocity?"

"About twelve million miles an hour," Brett said. "As against a former
seven and one-half million. Not so great a change, Frank?"

"No," I admitted. "But----"

"But you can not quite grasp how the two velocities can be the same?
Existing simultaneously in the same vehicle, only with a differing
viewpoint?"

I think that was my trouble. I nodded, and he said at once, "To the
larger viewpoint, Frank, the Space had diminished a thousand times, to
make a thousand miles become as one mile. Not an _actual_ change--a
relative change only. But twelve million miles an hour, with distance
diminished one thousand times, is the same as twelve thousand million
miles an hour with the distance factor unaltered. You see that, of
course. Or consider the relative Time-values. The vehicle's Time
was seven seconds to about two hours. The exact figures were one to
one thousand. In the vehicle we lived a thousand earth-seconds in one.
Applied, then, to the two viewpoints of velocity, it gives identical
results for the distance traveled. Whatever the factors involved--the
earth-Time; the vehicle-Time; the Space relative to the vehicle; or to
the earth; and the velocity, relative either to the vehicle-size or
earth-size--the result must be mathematically the same. You see? And,
Frank, in describing the progressive size-changes into which we now
plunged, I shall give you always Space with earth-standards, and our
velocity from the viewpoint of earth. It reached tremendous figures;
but you are to remember always that of actuality they must be divided
by the relative size factor. They were never greater than you would
have expected the vehicle to obtain.

"I was saying that we were headed for Alpha Centauri. Again we started
the growth. I threw the switch to its fullest intensity. Martt stayed
to watch the dials; I sat on the floor, gazing down through the window
at the star-field spread out beneath me. When my head had cleared from
the shock of starting the growth, I sat absorbed in watching. Soon
visible movements appeared. The star-drifts began to be apparent. And
we were going toward these stars; the apparent shortening Space, added
to our increasing relative velocity, made their approach visible. In
the field to the sides of us, the stars were shifting upward. Those in
front were spreading apart with a movement very slow but perceptible as
we dropped toward them.

"I do not know how long I sat there; Martt occasionally would call to
me from his post at the dials, but I hardly heard him. Alpha Centauri
presently came rushing forward. As you know, it is a binary--twin stars
a few hundred million miles apart, its components revolving about each
other with a period of eighty-one years. It had been one blazing white
point of light. Then it separated into two. They stayed visually small,
for they were dwindling before the vehicle's growth; but they came
rushing toward us. Soon I could see them separated by a narrow black
ribbon of the void; and could see them revolving one about the other."

"An eighty-one-year period, and you could see it!" I exclaimed.

"Yes--a very slow movement, but I could see it. I would have passed
between them--the ribbon of Space there was widening rapidly, the stars
themselves had become great, blazing white-hot suns. But I was afraid
of the heat; I altered our course to present a slightly repellent side.
The firmament turned partly over. The two stars swung up past our side
window; in visual diameter larger than our earthly sun--they mounted
upward, closed in above us, drew together to form one; a sun at first;
then a brilliant star; then faint, until with the naked eye I lost it.

"Beneath us, the star-field in front was rushing upward much faster
now. The constellations opening; the stars shifting--everywhere was
movement--strange movement, unnatural, fantastic. I confess, Father,
that I was injudicious. Martt was absorbed, fascinated in watching the
dials, and when occasionally he would call to me, I told him everything
was all right."

"I didn't know what was going on," said Martt. "You told me to sit
there and I sat there."

"Of course you didn't know what was going on," Brett smiled. "But I
did, and I think for a time I lost my wits. The stars were thick and
close around us. The nebulæ were opened into individual points of fire.
Everywhere was movement, unreal. Stars rotating visibly; binaries
shifting about each other; other stars shifting about each other; other
stars seeming to enlarge in size, or to diminish, to swing this way
or that with all the optical vagaries of our velocity, our changing
Time and Size; and always those of the star-field in front--beneath
us--spreading to the sides, rushing past our windows, closing in above
us and fading into invisibility.

"A myriad universes in fantastic motion. And suddenly I realized that
these giant suns were very close to us, and very small! Some I had
recognized--blazing globes 100 million miles and more in diameter,
and thought myself ten times that far from them. But it was not so.
I stared at a giant globe 100 million miles in diameter, and with
my viewpoint suddenly changed I saw that it was no more than a tiny
glowing meteor, sweeping past a few miles away!

"All this star-field, little balls, rolling close upon us. A miracle
that none hit us, though some time before, I had had the wit to call
to Martt to make all the faces repellent. By inertia only, we plunged
onward, repelling what lay in our path.

"I saw a wandering asteroid--a few hundred miles perhaps in diameter.
It was whirling on its axis like a ball thrown into the air. A
whimsical humor--a madness perhaps--had descended upon me. There was
nothing but the asteroid momentarily close before us, and I called to
Martt to throw attraction into the bottom of the vehicle. The asteroid
came rushing. But shrinking--shrinking until I laughed aloud to see it
dwindle to a ball I could have held in my hand; and dwindle further
until impotently it struck the floor window with a tiny point of fire
from its fusing rock and metal. A burning cinder which scarce would
have hurt me had I caught it in my naked hands.


                                  VI

"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."

Frannie asked, "What was your discovery?"

He smiled. "Curious as always, little sister? It was that the giant was
in the act of becoming _smaller_! The gnomes were growing in size!" He
checked our chorus of exclamations.

"I will tell you now: This giant--these gnomes--were three beings who
did not belong to the girl's world. They had come there from a greater
world outside the atom. By means of science--such means possibly as we
now were using with the vehicle--they had diminished their stature to
the infinitely small. Had gone down and down into their tiny atom, to
come upon the girl and her realm."


                                  II

Again Brett waved us aside. "Not now, please! Oh, yes--I can tell you
the structure of this, our little fragment of the material universe!
But let me finish first about our voyage.

"With our Time-change corrected, the myrdoscope readily had picked up
the image of the girl. A larger image, for we were 12,000 light-years
closer to her. The same scene, stricken again of motion. The giant
standing there; the gnome climbing upon the girl's ankle; and herself,
just aware of her danger, with dawning terror on her face.

"The electro-telescope also was working now. Looking behind us, we
could just see the last of the stars. And soon they were gone. A day of
our conscious existence went by. At 3,000 light-years an hour we added
72,000 light-years of distance--a total from earth of about 84,000. The
black abyss of Space had not remained empty. Off to one side had been
a faint glow. A nebula; a patch of star-dust. Through the telescope we
could see stars--a complete starry universe. It was as large, no doubt,
as that we had passed through.

"It gave us a new idea of the immensity of Space. Separated by some
30,000 light-years from our own universe of stars--of which the Solar
System is so tiny a part--this other star-patch was equally as large.
And yet it seemed to lie isolated in fathomless Space. It drifted by
us and in a few hours was gone. And far off to the other side of us,
another patch came past. And others; each several thousand light-years
in extent; each isolated from all its fellows.

"We traveled another full day. Over 150,000 light-years from earth. Yet
the girl's image was seemingly not coming nearer very rapidly. We felt
the voyage would take too long, so again we increased our size."

I interrupted. "Had you calculated the girl's relative size?"

"Yes," he said. "In a moment, Frank, you shall have it. We--our
vehicle--was 500,000 miles high, compared to earth. We increased
it to 600,000. Our velocity also increased. At a million miles of
height--I have made all my stated figures round numbers, but they
are approximately correct--at this million-mile height, we reached
normality to the girl. It simplified our mechanism adjustments. There
was no longer a size-change necessary. A retrograde Time-change, equal
to our own now normal rate of existence, held us at that same instant
of her life.

"Our velocity was more than proportionately increased. To demonstrate
that mathematically would be intricate--would involve several very
complicated formulas, which would not interest you now. . . We passed,
distantly, a score or more of starry universes--to the sides, and
above and below us--lying in every plane; and of every size and
general extent. Some were small, a few thousand light-years like our
own. Others immense; one which seemed 500,000 light-years at least in
diameter.

"We reached ultimately a maximum velocity of about 90,000 light-years
an hour. We had previously gone 150,000 light-years from earth. We
traveled some eighty additional hours, not all at the maximum--for
possibly half that time we were steadily accelerating. And at a total
of 4,750,000 light-years from the earth, a faint glow of seeming
phosphorescence showed in the blackness beneath us.

"There was a universe to one side, ahead of us. But this was a
different light. A radiation from the Inner Surface itself. The Inner
Surface of the hollow little atom within which all this Space and its
infinitesimal whirling electrons is contained. They are immense suns,
to us here on earth, but from the larger viewpoint they were mere
electrons, whirling, flashing around in tiny orbits a thousand times a
second.

"The girl and her realm, as we had thought, are on this Inner Surface
of what we may choose to call an atom. Themselves--this girl and her
people--are infinitesimal. This atom of ours is merely some tiny
particle of matter in that other world from which the giant and the
gnomes had descended. A tiny particle of matter. Call it a grain
of sand, lying with trillions of its fellows upon some great ocean
beach--lying there in the light of stars shining in infinite Space
above it. Lying there for a single starlit night which is all eternity
for us. A single starlit night--an eternity! Infinity, of Space and
Time? Why, even now I have seen no more than an infinitesimal fragment
of them! . . . .

"The giant and gnomes were doubtless normally of the same size--only
momentarily did they happen to be different. . . . Wait, Frannie,
please! I can't tell it to you any faster. . . . The Inner Surface
became visible to our telescopes at about 4,900,000 light-years. A
realm of land and water. Vegetation. Strange of aspect, yet normal too.
It stretched beneath us in every direction--a huge concave surface.

"We kept our size, but using the repellent force of this Inner Surface,
I gradually cut down our velocity. Down more and more until that last
light-year or so took us a week to traverse. The girl, Father, is
approximately 5,000,000 light-years from here. We--our earth--may be
near the center of the void. I don't know. Perhaps we are much nearer
the girl's side. It isn't important . . .

"The Inner Surface at last lay close beneath us. It took us an
additional week of diminishing velocity to reach its atmosphere. I was
cautious; I had the velocity under control always."

He paused a moment, seeming carefully to consider his next words. "I
want you now to forget earth standards. Take the larger viewpoint
exclusively. Let me speak of miles, not in relation to earth, but
miles--in relation to the Inner Surface--which are 100 million times
longer. Let me speak then of myself as again but six feet high; the
vehicle, 52.8 feet high. Realize that by the larger standards I was but
one-twentieth of a light-year from earth."

Dr. Gryce said gravely, "Your telescope would show a globe like the
earth very plainly at one-twentieth of a light-year of distance. You
must explain, Brett, why you could not see it--or any of the great
stars of our immediate universe."

Brett nodded. "We could not see the earth, because to our size it was
merely a little orange. To be more exact, a ball about five inches in
diameter. A tiny ball I could have held in my hand, whirling out there
in Space, spinning like a top on its axis to make your infinitesimal
days and nights; traversing its entire orbit--a complete revolution
around its little sun--more than three times every second!

"With these other standards, then, I want you to visualize us as we sat
on the floor of the vehicle gazing down through the lower window. We
were, say a hundred miles above the Inner Surface, just entering the
upper strata of its atmosphere, and falling gently downward. Beneath
us lay a broad vista of land and water; vegetation; forests; here and
there patches of human habitation--houses, villages. It was a strange,
unfamiliar landscape, yet not unduly abnormal. In every direction--as
we dropped closer--it spread upward to our horizon. A rolling country;
gently undulating hills, broad valleys--and off near the horizon a
jagged mountain range. It seemed not far away; we could see black
yawning holes in it; the mouths of caves, or tunnels, perhaps.

"The broad crescent lake lay directly beneath us. Trees bordered its
banks; trees strange of shape--yet one would call them trees at once.
A collection of low, flat-roofed buildings lay beside the water. A
village--or a city. The buildings were queerly curved--seemingly
crescent-shaped. They had no straight lines. They seemed generally of
but one story, though a few were larger; and upon an eminence near the
water stood one much larger; more ornate of shape than all the others.

"It was not a fantastic scene, but wholly rational to our own accepted
standards. A sylvan atmosphere seemed to hang upon it. Trees and
flowers were everywhere; the roof-tops seemed gardens as luxuriant as
those beside the houses. The streets were broad and orderly; and beyond
the city ribbons of roads wound out over the hills.

"A sylvan landscape, with an air of quiet peace upon it. I felt a sense
of surprize. This was not modernity; nor a civilization more advanced
than our own--nor yet was it barbarism. Later I knew it was decadence.
A people who once had been far up the slope of civilization, over the
peak, and now were coming down upon the other side. The peaceful,
restful ease of decadence, which to complete the inevitable cycle of
all human life ultimately would again bring them to barbarism.

"We saw these details as we fell gently toward the crescent lake. You
will notice I have not mentioned color in the scheme, nor movement.
Our Time-mechanism was operating. The scene beneath us was stricken
motionless, since always we were holding to the same instant of its
Time. An unreality lay upon it; a flat, shadowy grayness of aspect. An
unnatural stillness. We dropped closer. A shadowy boat seemed on the
lake--a boat with a sail. It lay there, immobile. The water was rippled
by a breeze; but they were frozen ripples. And in the streets now we
saw people and curious vehicles--all standing like waxen figures.

"The grove of trees--the woodland dell wherein the girl was lying--was
a short distance down the lake shore from the city. A single house was
near it; but in the other direction was unbroken forest. An open space
was there--a few hundred feet from the girl and her assailants. We
decided to land there. We knew we were invisible as yet--a ghost of a
vehicle, all in this same instant coming from Space to land upon the
lake shore.

"We had not yet decided just what we would do. But it was necessary to
land first. And necessary also for the vehicle to assume the Time-rate
of this realm before we could leave it. When that was done we would be
normal humans, to rescue the girl as best we might.

"We dropped into the little clearing at the edge of the lake, and
gently came to rest--and upon the surface of the ground, since to us
it would have had no substance; but within a foot of it, where, like a
ghost hovering, I held us level. The unreality of us, I must repeat,
was not to us apparent; we seemed solid--it was the ground, the forest
about us which was unreal. Spectral trees; a gray twilight. I made
sure that nothing was touching us. We were a few inches only above a
soft-looking gray ground. We were ready to cut off our Time-change--to
take our places normal to this new realm."




                              _CHAPTER 8_

                   THE ENCOUNTER IN THE FOREST GLADE


Martt said, "I would have thrown off the Time-switch and rushed out at
once. But Brett wanted to talk about it."

Brett smiled. "It was difficult for us to remember that no haste was
needed. No haste--until we took the girl's Time-rate. And then we
would need all haste possible. We discussed what we were to do. We had
weapons--the electronic flash, for instance, with which we could have
struck down that giant as with a lightning bolt. But could we? I was
not sure--not absolutely sure--that the weapon would be operative. Or
that, perchance, this giant would not by some strange means be proof
against it. A man sixty feet tall is no mean adversary. Suppose he held
the girl before him? Would I dare attack?"

"I suggested," Martt put in, "that we take the normal Time-rate of the
girl, and be in hiding until the giant's size had dwindled to hers. The
dwarfs were growing. But there would only be three of them, against two
of us--and so far as we had seen, they were not armed."

Brett went on: "That didn't seem a good plan. The giant's size was, we
had calculated, rapidly dwindling. Within five minutes he would be the
girl's size. But suppose, instead of standing there during those five
minutes he picked up the girl--made off with her? It was too dangerous.

"At last we decided to make the vehicle, and thus ourselves, somewhat
larger. At the risk seriously of frightening the girl, we decided to
take a stature larger than the giant. Thus, since he was not armed, we
would have little difficulty keeping the girl from harm.

"The forest glade within which our vehicle was hovering was ample for
the growth. We adjusted the mechanisms; and in a few moments of growth
we had reached the determined point. We shut off the switches; the
vehicle fell its few inches to the ground. . . .

"The scene clarified. We were in a somber forest of dull,
orange-colored vegetation. Above us was a deep purple sky, with a few
drifting clouds, and stars gleaming up there in the darkness. They were
the stars of that last universe we had passed; unnatural of aspect, for
they seemed unduly close and unduly small.

"It was not day--nor yet was it night. A queerly shimmering twilight;
shadowless, for the light seemed inherent to everything.

"We were aware of all this in an instant, but we did not stop to regard
it, for Time now was passing. The girl and her assailants were now,
we knew, in full motion. With the flash cylinders in hand we stepped
hastily from the vehicle doorway.

"The forest trees were saplings no higher than ourselves. We plunged
through them, came to the other glade. The girl was sitting up with
hands pressed to her breast in terror--a tiny figure of a girl not as
long as my hand. The dwarfs were so small I did not see them at first;
they were standing beside her--an inch perhaps in height. The giant,
with what drug acting upon him we could only guess, had dwindled until
he was only about half our own present height. He had dropped his
tree-bludgeon, which now was too large for him, and was stooping down
to seize the girl. His leer, with the reality of motion upon it, was
horrible.

"Momentarily we had stopped at the edge of the glade. The figures
there were aware of us. The girl screamed--a little voice, shrill with
terror, an agony of sudden fear--at her assailants, and doubtless most
of all at ourselves. The giant--I can no longer call him that, since
we saw him as no more than three feet tall--at our appearance he
straightened. Stared at us. Surprize, then fear swept his ugly hairy
face. He shouted something to his tiny companions.

[Illustration: "The girl screamed--a little voice, shrill with terror,
an agony of sudden fear."]

"Martt's hand went up; he fired his cylinder. But he was confused--and
the nearness of the girl to his mark made him aim high. The bolt
missed; lodged harmlessly in a tree with a ripping of its bark. I
rushed forward to seize our adversary, but he eluded me, leaped over
the girl. I was afraid of trampling her--I stepped backward--clutched
Martt, fearful of what he might do.

"It had all happened in a moment. The dwarfs had vanished; but the
other man--he was now no higher than my knees--was standing by a tree
behind the girl. He shouted again; and now the terror had left his
face and he was grinning, I saw his hand go swiftly to his mouth. Had
he taken more of his strange drug? Had he warned his two companions to
do the same? I think so, for before my eyes he was swiftly diminishing
in size. I knelt carefully beside the girl. Her figure--smaller than
my foot and near it--was huddled into a little ball, her head against
her upraised knees. She may have fainted; I did not heed her, save to
be careful my movements did not strike her. With arm stretched over
her I reached for the man. But he hopped away and eluded me. Still
grinning. As small now as my little finger he stood half hiding behind
a grass-blade. On hands and knees I pursued him. But like an insect, he
was too quick for me. Smaller always until I was probing the grass with
my fingers to find him--saw him momentarily like an ant in size as he
leaped into a tangle of tiny grass-blades and was gone.

"I had forgotten my weapon. Illogically I had had no desire to kill
that tiny figure--only to catch it. But Martt had had no such feelings.
He was stamping around the glade--trying to stamp upon the other
figures--and mumbling angrily to himself. I called to ask if he had
caught them. He didn't know. He had seen them momentarily--seen them
raise their hands to their mouths. But they had dwindled so fast, they
were lost in a moment.

"The girl was unconscious, lying there in a huddled little heap. Gently
I raised her, held her in the palm of my hand. She was white as a
little waxen figure--white and beautiful; and so small I scarce dared
to touch her with my huge rough fingers.

"Martt brought water from the lake. I rested my hand on the ground,
with her still lying in it. And then presently she opened her eyes."

Brett paused, and as he gazed at each of us in turn I thought I had
never seen his face so earnest. And there was upon it, too, a look
almost of exaltation--a look which transfigured it. He added gently:
"You three--my father, my sister, my friend, I have no need to hide
from you my emotions. I think then--incongruously perhaps, for that
little figure of girlhood lying there so soft and warm in the palm of
my hand--I think then my love for her was born."

Hide his emotions! He could not had he wished. This love in his
heart was written plain on his face, to soften it, to uplift it to
something--or so it seemed to me--something just a little more than
human. A touch, perchance, of divinity. And I think now that love does
that--if only for some fleeting moment--to each one of us.

He went on very softly: "She opened her eyes. I was afraid she would
be frightened. I tried to look very gentle, compassionate. I held
my hand very still. I think that for an instant Martt and I stopped
breathing. . . She opened her eyes--met mine. I saw in hers a flash
of terror. But something, strangely, must have conquered it--against
all reason as she stared at me. Stared while the terror faded, and her
little lips parted and smiled a welcome and a thanks. . ."




                              _CHAPTER 9_

            "DWINDLING GIANTS FROM LARGENESS UNFATHOMABLE"


There was not one of us who would have interrupted Brett when he paused
to light an arrant-cylinder and to choose what next he would tell us.
He was speaking softly, reminiscently, and with a curious gentleness.

"I carried her to the vehicle, showed it to her. Obviously she could
understand nothing of my words; but she was very quick to read my
gestures; smiling readily now, with her fear quite gone. And sitting
up in the palm of my hand, with her arm flung about my thumb to steady
her, she bade me raise her to my ear. Her words--the softest, the
tiniest of human voices--what she said was wholly unintelligible, save
that I understood her name was Leela.

"She stood beside a tree at a distance while we re-entered the vehicle
and brought it down to a size normal to her; and came out of it to
confront her."

Martt burst out: "I tell you that was when I realized how beautiful she
is. Say, you never saw a girl like her--you can't describe it----"

"I'm not trying," said Brett with his gentle smile. "She met us--there
by the vehicle--to us then, Frannie, she was about your size--perhaps
a little smaller. She took our hands, laid them against her forehead
as though with a gesture of welcome. And led us presently to her
home--the house near by. Her father (her mother is dead) her father is
a musician. Noted--very high of rank and standing among his people. A
kindly old man, with gray and black hair worn long to the base of his
neck. We--Martt and I--didn't let ours grow, though as you see we took
their mode of dress."

"How long were you there?" I asked.

"We slept perhaps three hundred times," he answered. "There are no
days and nights--always that same half-luminous twilight. No change
of seasons--or very little. It is nature in her softest mood. Nothing
to struggle against--life made easy. Too easy. . . It was not we who
learned Leela's language, but she, like an unnatural precocious child,
who learned ours. . . We created a commotion among the people; the
ruler sent for us. . . Oh, I have so much I'd like to tell you. But
Martt can tell it--after----"

He checked himself suddenly. His words, some vague hint of what he
almost had added, sent an ominous chill to my heart; and I saw, too,
that Dr. Gryce had felt it, for a cloud came to his face and in his
eyes I saw fear lurking.

But Brett went on at once: "I'd like to tell you of these people. A
race at peace with nature and themselves. The struggle for existence
all in the past. Decadence. The down-hill grade. Only by struggle can
Man progress, Father. This race, with the peak of its civilization
thousands of generations in its Past, gently resting, with the
inevitable decadence drawing it inexorably back to the barbarism
from whence it sprung. I'd like to tell you of their customs, their
government--their mode of life. . . Some other time--or Martt will
tell you. . . It was all so beautiful--so romantic. . . Music--their
strange, beautiful arts--Music as Leela's father gave it--Art to take
the place of Science and Industry. . . You ask Martt to tell you about
the dancing--the pageants, if you want to call them that, to which we
went so many times with Leela. . . But just now I'm tired--I think I've
talked too much--and I'm worried--and it seems to press me, against
all the logic of our Science, that I have no time to spend, telling all
this to you. . ."

Brett, indeed, seemed suddenly tired, or perhaps harassed at the
thoughts which had come to him. I had been so absorbed--as had all of
us--that we had given no heed to the passing hours. Abruptly I realized
that the room was chill with early morning; through the window I saw
the flush of the eastern sky.

Martt followed my glance. "Why, it's dawn! Brett's been talking all
night."

Brett said strangely: "Too long! Father, this gentle race living out
there in such seeming security had just been visited by beings from
the great world outside it. A world known to them only by legend of
their past ages which they scarce knew to be true or false. Those three
assailants of Leela's--and other men like them--had suddenly appeared
as dwindling giants coming down out of largeness unfathomable. They had
already destroyed a city. . ."

Brett's voice had risen; he was talking faster now; and there was
a touch of wildness in his tone--a wildness perhaps born of his
exhaustion, and the emotional stress under which I knew now he had been
laboring all night.

"Our arrival there, Father--the three assailants of Leela--I think the
larger, him whom we have called the 'giant'--I think he is leader of
the invaders from that greater world. Our appearance--our own power to
change size which perhaps he observed there in the forest--must have
frightened him. The invaders vanished. But at the end of those months
we lived there--another of these giants was seen.

"They're coming back again--to threaten Leela and all her people! I
came here to see you, Father--to tell you all I've told--and to leave
Martt. But I'm going back--to do what I can against this threat--this
invasion. And I want to go back to Leela. She----"

"She was afraid to come with us," Martt put in. "I wanted her to
come--and now I want to go back with Brett. We've been arguing about it
for days--he won't let me go back with him--he's stubborn----"

Brett reiterated: "I'm going back. I'm going alone. As soon as I've
slept--I've got to sleep now--you, you'll excuse me--let me take a
good long sleep--I'm too tired to argue about it now. . . Good night,
Frannie, dear--good night, Father--good night, Frank."

He was presently gone from the room. Dr. Gryce had been sitting beside
me and I put my hand on his arm. His face was quite colorless; his
voice, suddenly very old and helpless, was murmuring, "I don't want him
to go out there again. I'm afraid--and I don't want him to do it. . ."




                             _CHAPTER 10_

                         THE SOLITARY VOYAGER


"But Brett," I said, "there are one or two things I want to ask you.
About your return voyage--for instance----"

It was mid-afternoon. Brett, thoroughly rested, was wholly himself
again. Quiet, composed and smiling, but very determined; even a little
grim. And I think he was a bit ashamed of the sudden, almost querulous
way in which he had terminated his narrative and left us there in the
observation room at dawn. He had had his sleep now; and had been alone
for an hour with his father. Martt and Frannie had been called to them;
I--an outsider--was not asked, or wanted. What took place there behind
the closed door of the study, it was not for me to ask. But when they
came out I knew that Brett had won. A questionable victory, for old Dr.
Gryce was visibly broken; Frannie--pale and upon the verge of tears;
and Martt for a time a trifle sullen; resentful that he was to be left
behind. I think it hurt Brett--this fear he was bringing upon those
he loved. But he was very determined; convinced that it was the right
thing for him to do.

"I start back tonight, Frank," he told me soberly as he emerged from
the study.

"Oh," I said. "For how long will you be gone this time?"

He hesitated. A look, which even now my memory fails to interpret,
came to him. Then he smiled. "I don't know. But remember, Frank, I can
return--with only those limitations the Almighty enforces--I can return
to any point of earth-Time I wish. As you will live it--well, I shall
aim to return here within a month."

It was then I asked him about the return voyage he and Martt had just
made. "Brett, I've been wondering--did our aural ray guide you back?"

"Yes," he said. "On the voyage back, the first thing I did was to put
the vehicle back through Time to a chosen instant at which I wished
to arrive here on earth. When that was done, I held that instant
always. We could not see the aural ray going out--when we looked
back for it--for two reasons. One: Our Time had run far into earth's
Future, and the ray was non-existent. The other: Even had we taken the
proper Time-point, we were outrunning the light-rays themselves. In
space, I mean, the aural ray left earth only with the speed of light.
Our velocity exceeded that. You see? But on the return voyage we
encountered the ray as we came in. A mere flash over the sky; but its
characteristic color-bands guided us."

What he said about outrunning the light-rays made me think of the
myrdoscope, the image of that girl--which they had received here on
earth before the voyage--that image had crossed a space 5,000,000
light-years in extent. But when I mentioned it, he explained:

"The myrdal rays are not light, Frank, but only akin to it. Their
velocity--why, light beside them is a laggard. We have no way of
computing the velocity of the myrdal rays. But over a finite distance
such as five million light-years--for practical purposes it is
instantaneous. . .

"I wanted to tell you--I was confused last night--I meant to explain
that coming back I used quite a different method from the outward trip.
I chanced a disturbance of some of those outlying starry universes,
and when we left the Inner Surface, I made the vehicle larger instead
of smaller. The void of Space shrank until about us the universes were
clustered like little patches of mist--tiny areas of glowing star-dust.
I saw our own, with its spectrum of the aural ray, quite readily. And
had reached it with a voyage of a few hours--and then reduced our size."

"And your Time," I said. "Brett, I didn't see the vehicle until it was
almost entering the earth's atmosphere. And--just for an instant--it
seemed not solid, but like a vague gray ghost. Then suddenly it
materialized."

He smiled and nodded. "Yes. That was when I took the earth's normal
Time-rate."

The family joined us; we said no more. And that night Brett left us
for his solitary voyage. I would not set down here in detail those
last good-byes. Emotion repressed--it was what was not said that held
a pathos I shall never forget. An outward attempt at lightness. Martt
laughed, "Give my love to Leela." And Frannie said, "You tell her I'm
jealous because she's so beautiful."

Just before Brett closed the door of the vehicle, Dr. Gryce spoke--the
only thing he had said for an hour past.

"You'll be sure to come back, Brett? Within the month, lad?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, Father dear."

"Well--good-bye. . ."

Good-bye! I can think of no sadder word for human tongue to frame.




                             _CHAPTER 11_

            BRAVE LITTLE BEACON STRIVING TO PIERCE INFINITY


That little month of anxious watching and waiting passed so slowly! And
yet so quickly, as one by one its golden moments of hope drained away.

Brett did not return. A month, then a year, while Dr. Gryce made me
leave the Service, to enter his, that all my time might be spent in
watching.

A year; and now another year has passed. Brett would return within the
month. With his Time-mechanism unimpaired, no delay out there in the
Beyond could have affected his return to reach us during that first
little month. With that passed and gone, reason could only show the
futility of expecting him ever. Yet reason plays so small a part, when
it would seek to kill hope.

The aural ray still burns--brave little beacon striving to pierce
infinity. Beside it, for those long, unreasoning hours of vigil, Dr.
Gryce sits and waits; silent, grayer and every day visibly older. The
possibilities of what could have happened to Brett--that myriad of
futile human conjectures--we have long since ceased voicing. Alone, I
sometimes speculate. Has Brett gone on into that outside world of which
we all are only a tiny atom? What is he doing? And then I tell myself,
what is it to me, save that it concerns Brett? The myriad, unfathomable
happenings of Eternal Time in Infinite Space--what right have I, one
tiny mortal, to probe them?

The beacon burns to guide Brett back to us. Will he ever come? I
wonder. My brain, with its logic, says he will not. But my heart says,
"Might he not come tonight?" Or with tonight passed, then tomorrow
he will be here. Thus hope runs on and on, daunted but never broken.
Blessed hope, to make possible a courageous living of this little
life until we ourselves are plunged into that glowing Infinity of the
Hereafter.


                                THE END


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78455 ***