The Complete Serials Page 7

  Three suns blazed in the sky; one white, two a misty blue, all three pouring out a flood of light and energy that, Gary realized, would have made Sol seem like a tiny candle.

  Tommy’s fingers flew over the rocket banks, setting up a braking pattern. But as he did so, the speed of the ship seemed to slow, as if they were driving into a soft, but resistant cushion.

  And in their brains rang a voice of command . . . a voice telling them to do nothing . . . that they and their ship would be brought down to the city in safety. Not so much like words as if each man had thought the thought himself, as if each one of them knew exactly what to do.

  Gary glanced at Caroline and saw her lips shape a single word. “Engineers.”

  So it hadn’t been a nightmare after all. There really were a people who called themselves the Cosmic Engineers—there really was a city—

  The ship still plunged toward the city, but its speed was slowing down, and now Gary realized that when first they had seen this pile of stone they had been many miles away. In comparison to the city, they and their ship were tiny things—little things, like ants crawling in the shadow of a mountain.

  THEN THEY were within the city, or at least its upper portion. The ship flashed past a mighty spire of stone and swung into its shadow. Below them they saw new details of the city, winding streets and broad parkways and boulevards, like tiny ribbons in the distance. A city that could thrill one with its mere bigness. A city that would have put a thousand New Yorks to shame. A city that dwarfed even the most ambitious dreams of mankind. A million of Man’s cities piled into one. Gary tried to imagine how big the planet must be to bear such a city, but his mind whirled and refused to think.

  They were dropping toward one of the fifth tiers of buildings, down and down, closer and closer to the massive blocks of stone. So close now that their vision was cut off, and the terrace of the tier seemed like a broad, flat plain.

  A section of the roof was opening, like a door opening outward into space. The ship, floating on an even keel, drifted gently downward, toward that yawning trapdoor. Then they were through the door, with plenty of room to spare, were floating softly down between walls of delicate pastel hues.

  The ship settled with a gentle bump and was still. They had arrived at the end of their trip.

  “Well, we’re here,” said Herb. “I wonder what we’re supposed to do.”

  And as if in answer to his question the voice came again, the voice that wasn’t a voice, but as if each man were thinking for himself.

  It said: “This is a place we have especially prepared for you. You will find the gravity and the atmosphere and the surroundings natural to yourselves. You will need no space-suits, no artificial trappings of any sort. Food is waiting you.”

  They stared at one another in amazement.

  “Say,” said Herb, “I think I’ll like this place. Did you hear that? Food!”

  Tommy got out of the pilot’s chair. “What are we waiting for?” he asked. He strode to the inner valve of the air lock and spun the wheel. The others crowded behind him.

  They stepped out of the ship onto a great slab of stone placed in the center of a gigantic room. The stone, apparently, was merely there for the ship to rest upon, for the rest of the floor was paved in scintillating tiny blocks of mineral that flashed and glinted in the light from the three suns pouring in through a huge, translucent skylight. The walls of the room were done in soft pastel shades, and on the walls were hung huge paintings, while ringed about the ship was furniture, perfect rooms of furniture, but with no dividing walls. An entire household set up in one room.

  A living room, a library, bedrooms and a dining room. A dining room with massive oaken table and five chairs. And upon the table a banquet to do justice to a king.

  “Chicken!” said Herb and the single word carried a weight of awe.

  “And wine,” said Tommy.

  They stared in amazement at the table. Gary sniffed. He could smell the chicken.

  “Antique furniture,” said Kingsley. “That stuff would bring a fortune back in the Solar System. Mostly Chatterton—and it looks authentic. And beautiful examples—museum pieces, every one. Thousand years old, at least.” He stared from piece to piece. “But how did they get it here?” he burst out.

  CAROLINE’S laughter rang through the room, a chiming, silver laughter that had a note of wild happiness in it.

  “What’s the matter?” demanded Tommy.

  “I don’t see anything funny,” declared Herb. “Unless there is a joke. Unless that chicken really isn’t chicken.”

  “It’s chicken,” Caroline assured him. “And the rest of the food is real, too. And so is the furniture. Only I didn’t think of it as antique. You see, a thousand years ago, that sort of furniture was the accepted thing. It was in style. They were the smartest sort of pieces to have in your home.”

  “But you,” said Gary. “What did you have to do with it?”

  “I told the Engineers,” she said. “They asked me what we ate and I told them. They must have understood me far better than I thought. I told them the kind of clothes we wore, and the kind of furniture we used. But, you see, the only things I knew about were out of date, things the people used a thousand years ago. All except the chicken. You still eat chicken, don’t you?”

  “And how,” grinned Herb.

  “Why,” said Gary, “this means the Engineers can make anything they want to. They can arrange atoms to make any sort of material. They can transmute matter!”

  Kingsley nodded. “That’s exactly what it means,” he said.

  Herb was hurrying for the table.

  “If we don’t get there, there won’t be anything left,” Tommy suggested.

  The chicken, the mashed potatoes and gravy, the wine, the stuffed olives—all of the food was good. It might have come out of the kitchen of the Solar System’s smartest hotel only a few minutes before. After days of living on coffee and hastily slapped-together sandwiches, they did full justice to it.

  Herb regarded with regret the last piece of chicken and shook his head dolefully.

  “I never tasted such food in my life,” Kingsley declared.

  “They asked me what we ate,” Caroline said, “so I thought of all the things I like the best. They didn’t leave out a single thing.”

  “But where are the Engineers?” asked Gary. “We haven’t seen a thing of them. We have seen plenty of what they have done and can do, but not one has showed himself.”

  Footsteps rasped across the floor and Gary swung around in his chair. Advancing toward them was a thing that looked something like a man, but not exactly a man. It was the same height, had the same general appearance—two arms, two legs, a man-shaped torso, a head. But there was something wrong with the face; something definitely wrong with the body.

  “There’s the answer to your question,” said Tommy. “There is an Engineer now.”

  Gary scarcely heard him. He was watching the Engineer intently as the creature approached. And he knew why the Engineer was different. Cast in human shape, he was still a far cry from the humans of the Solar System, for the Engineer was a metal man! A man constructed of metallic matter instead of protoplasm. “A metal man,” he said.

  “That’s right,” replied Kingsley, and keen interest rather than wonderment was in his words. “This must be a large planet. The force of gravity must be tremendous. Protoplasm probably would be unable to stand up under its pull. We’d probably just melt down if the Engineers hadn’t fixed up this place for us.”

  “You are right,” said the metal man, but his mouth didn’t open, his facial expression didn’t change. He was speaking to them as the voice had spoken to them back on Pluto, as the voice had spoken to them as they entered the city. The Engineer stopped beside the table and stood stiffly, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Is everything satisfactory?” asked the Engineer.

  IT WAS funny, this way he had of talking. No sound, no change of expression, no gestur
e—just words burning themselves into one’s brains, the imprint of thought thrust upon one’s consciousness.

  “Why, yes,” said Gary, “everything is fine.”

  “Fine!” shouted Herb, waving a drumstick. “Why, everything is perfect.”

  “We tried so hard to do everything just as you told us,” said the Engineer. “We are pleased that everything is all right. We had a hard time understanding one thing. Those paintings on the wall. You said they were things that you had and were used to and we wanted so much to make everything as you wanted it. But they were something we had never thought of. Something we had never done. We are sorry we were so stupid. They are fine things. When this trouble is over we may make some of them. They are so very beautiful. How queer it was we hadn’t thought of them.”

  Gary swung around and stared at a painting opposite the table. Obviously it was a work in oil, and seemed a very fine one. It portrayed some fantastic scene, a scene with massive mountains in the background and strange twisted trees and waist-high grass and the glitter of a distant waterfall. A picture that any art exhibit would be proud to hang.

  “You mean,” he asked, “that these are the first pictures you ever painted?”

  “We hadn’t even thought of them before,” said the Engineer.

  They hadn’t known of pictures before. No single Engineer had ever thought to capture a scene on canvas. They had never wielded an artist’s brush. But here was a painting that was perfect in color and in technique, well balanced, pleasing to the eye!

  “One thing about you fellows,” said Tommy, “is that you will tackle anything.”

  “It was so simple,” said the Engineer, “that we are ashamed we never thought of it.”

  “But this trouble,” rumbled Kingsley. “This danger to the universe. You told us about it back on Pluto, but you didn’t explain. We would like to know.”

  “That,” said the Engineer, “is what I am here to tell you.”

  No change in the tone of thoughts—no slightest trend of emotion. No change of expression on his face.

  “We will do whatever we can to help,” Kingsley told him.

  “We are sure of that,” said the Engineer. “We are glad that you are here. We were so satisfied when you said you’d come. We feel you can help us very, very much.”

  “But the danger,” said Caroline. “What is the danger?”

  “I will begin,” said the Engineer, “with information that to us is very elemental. I do not believe you know it. You had no chance to find out, being so far from the edge of the universe. But we who have lived here so long found the truth, long ago.

  “This universe is only one of many universes. Only one of billions and billions of universes. We believe there are as many universes as there are galaxies in our universe.”

  The Earthlings looked in astonishment at him. Gary glanced at Kingsley. The scientist seemed speechless. He was sputtering, trying to talk. “There’re over fifty billion galaxies within the universe,” he finally said. “Or at least that is what our astronomers believe.”

  “Sorry to contradict,” said the Engineer. “There are many more than that.

  Many times more than that.”

  “More!” said Kingsley faintly, for him.

  “The universes are four-dimensional,” said the Engineer, “and they exist within a five-dimensional interspace—perhaps another great superuniverse with the universes taking the place of galaxies.”

  “A universe within a universe,” said Gary, nodding his head. “And might it not be possible that this superuniverse is merely another universe within an even greater super-universe?”

  “That might be so,” declared the Engineer. “It is a theory we have often pondered on. But we have no way of knowing. We have so little knowledge—”

  A LITTLE SILENCE fell upon the room, a silence filled with awe. This talk of universes and super-universes. This dwarfing of values. This relegating of the universe to a mere speck of dust in an even greater place!

  “The universes, even as the galaxies, are very far apart,” the Engineer went on. “So very far apart that the odds against two of them meeting are almost incomprehensibly great. Farther apart than the suns in the galaxy, farther apart, relatively, than the galaxies in the universe. But entirely possible that, once in eternity, two universes will meet.”

  He paused, a dramatic silence in his thought. “And that chance has come,” he said. “We are about to collide with another universe.”

  They sat in stunned silence.

  “Like two stars colliding,” said Kingsley. “That’s what formed our Solar System.”

  “Yes,” said the Engineer, “like two stars colliding. Like a star once collided with your Sun.”

  Kingsley jerked his head up.

  “You knew about that?” he asked.

  “Yes, we knew about that. It was long ago. Many million years ago.”

  “How do you know about this other universe?” asked Tommy. “How could you know?”

  “Other beings in the other universe told us,” said the Engineer. “Beings that know much more in some lines than we know. Beings we have been talking to for many years.”

  “Then you knew for many years that the collision would take place,” said Kingsley.

  “Yes, we knew,” said the Engineer. “And we tried hard, the two peoples. We of this universe and those of the other universe. We tried hard to stop it. But there seemed no way. And so at last we agreed to summon, each from their own universe, the best minds we could find. Hoping they perhaps could find a way . . . find a way where we have failed.”

  “But we aren’t the best minds of the universe,” said Gary. “We are far down in the scale. Our intelligence, comparatively, is very low. We are just beginning. You know more than we can hope to know for centuries to come.”

  “That may be so,” agreed the Engineer, “but you may have something else. You may have a courage we do not possess. You may have an imagination we could not summon. Each people must have something to contribute. Remember—we had no art; our minds are different. It is so very important that the two universes do not collide.”

  “What would happen,” asked Kingsley, “if they did collide?”

  “The laws of the five-dimensional inter-space,” explained the Engineer, “are not the laws of our four-dimensional universe. Different results would occur under similar conditions. The two universes will not actually collide. They will be destroyed before they collide.”

  “Destroyed before they collide?” asked Kingsley.

  “Yes,” said the Engineer. “The two universes will ‘rub’—come so close together that they will set up a friction, or a frictional stress, in the five-dimensional inter-space. Under the interspace laws this friction will create new energy . . . raw energy . . . stuff that never has existed before. Each of the universes will absorb some of that energy, will drink it up. The energy will rush into our universes in ever-increasing floods. Unloosed, uncontrollable energy. It will increase the mass energy in each . . . will give each a greater mass.”

  KINGSLEY leaped to his feet, tipping over a coffee cup, staining the table cloth. “Increase the mass!” he shouted. “But—” Then he sat down again, like a man from whom the warp of life has been drawn, a strangely beaten figure. “Of course that would destroy us,” he mumbled. “Presence of mass is the only cause for the bending of space. An empty universe would have no space curvature. Totally devoid of matter, its space would be entirely uncurved. The more mass there is in space, the tighter space is curved. The more matter there is, the less space there is for it to occupy.

  “Flood the universe with energy from inter-space,” the Engineer agreed, “and space begins curving back, faster and faster, crowding the matter it does contain into smaller space . . . we would have a contracting rather than an expanding universe.”

  “Throw enough of that new energy into the universe,” rumbled Kingsley excitedly, “and it would be more like an explosion than anything else. All li
fe would be wiped out, galaxies would be destroyed. Existent mass would be compacted into a tiny area. It might even be destroyed. At the best the universe would have to start all over again.”

  “It would start over again,” said the Engineer. “There would be enough new energy absorbed by the universe for just such an occurrence as you have foreseen. The entire universe would revert to the original chaos.”

  “And me without my life insurance paid up,” said Herb.

  Gary snarled at him across the table.

  Caroline leaned her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. “The problem,” she said, “is to find out how to control that new energy if it does enter the universe.”

  “That is the problem,” agreed the Engineer.

  “Mister,” said Gary, “if anyone can do it, this little lady can. She knows more about a lot of things than you do. I’ll lay you a bet on that.”

  VIII.

  THE SUITS were marvelous things, flexible, with scarcely any weight at all, not uncomfortable like an ordinary space-suit.

  Herb admired his before he fastened down the helmet. “You say these things will let us walk around on your planet just as if we were at home?” he asked the Engineer.

  “We tried to make it comfortable for you,” the Engineer replied. “We hope you find them comfortable. You came so far to help and we are so glad to see you. We hope you will like us. We have tried so hard.”

  Caroline looked toward the Engineer curiously. There was a queer, vague undertone to all his thought-messages, an inexplicable sense of pleading, of a desire for praise from her or from Kingsley. It made no sense, and she tried to rationalize it away. She shook her head with a little impatient gesture, but still that deep, less-than-half-conscious feeling was there.

  It reminded her suddenly—with a little mounting lump in her throat—of her bird dog, a magnificent mahogany-and-white Chesapeake Bay retriever, dead these thousand years. Somehow she felt again as she used to when the dog had looked up at her after placing a recovered bird at her feet.

  He was gone—gone with all the world she’d known. Her ideas were magnificent antiques—museum pieces—in this newer day. But she felt that if, somehow, that dog had been granted eternal life, he’d be searching Earth for her still, searching . . . waiting . . . hungering for the return that never came. And rising in queerly mixed ecstasies of gladness and shyness at her coming—