Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 2 Part 73

'Hm-m-m. Want to talk about it?'

'Certainly - to you.' Waldo launched into an account of his interview with

Schneider, concerning which he had not previously spoken to Grimes, even though Grimes had made the trip with him. He never, as Grimes knew, discussed anything until he was ready to.

The story of the third set of deKalbs to be infected with the incredible writhings caused Grimes to raise his eyebrows. 'Mean to say you caught on how to do that?'

'Yes indeed. Not "how", maybe, but I can do it. I've done it more than once. I'll show you.' He drifted away towards one side of the great room where several sets of deKalbs, large and small, were mounted, with their controls, on temporary guys.

'This fellow over on the end, it just came in today. Broke down. I'll give it Gramps Schneider's hocus-pocus and fix it. Wait a minute. I forgot to turn on the power.'

He returned to the central ring which const.i.tuted his usual locus and switched on the beamcaster. Since the ship itself effectively shielded anything in the room from outer radiation, he had installed a small power plant and caster similar in type to NAPA's giant ones; without it he would have had no way to test the reception of the deKalbs.

He rejoined Grimes and pa.s.sed down the line of deKalbs, switching on the activizing circuits. All save two began to display the uncouth motions he had begun to think of as the Schneider flex.

'That one on the far end,' he remarked, 'is in operation but doesn't flex.

It has never broken down, so it's never been treated. It's my control; but this one' - he touched the one in front of him - 'needs fixing.

Watch me.'

'What are you going to do?'

'To tell the truth, I don't quite know. But I'll do it.' He did not know.

All he knew was that it was necessary to gaze down the antennae, think about them reaching into the Other World, think of them reaching for power, reaching - The antennae began to squirm.

'That's all there is to it - strictly between ourselves. I learned it from

Schneider.' They had returned to the centre of the sphere, at Grimes's suggestion, on the pretext of wanting to get a cigarette. The squirming deKalbs made him nervous, but he did not want to say so.

'How do you explain it?'

'I regard it as an imperfectly understood phenomenon of the Other s.p.a.ce.

I know less about it than Franklin knew about lightning. But I will know-

I will! I could give Stevens a solution right now for his worries if I knew some way to get around your problem too.'

'I don't see the connexion.'

'There ought to be some way to do the whole thing through the Other s.p.a.ce.

Start out by radiating power into the Other s.p.a.ce and pick it up from there.

Then the radiation could not harm human beings. It would never get at them; it would duck around them. I've been working on my caster, but with no luck so far. I'll crack it in time.'

'I hope you do. Speaking of that, isn't the radiation from your own caster loose in this room?'

'Yes.'

'Then I'll put on my shield coat. It's not good for you either.'

'Never mind. I'll turn it off.' As he turned to do so there was the sound of a sweet, chirruping whistle. Baldur barked. Grimes turned to see what caused it.

'What,' he demanded, 'have you got there?'

'Huh? Oh, That's my cuckoo clock. Fun, isn't it?' Grimes agreed that it was, although he could not see much use for it. Waldo had mounted it on the edge of a light metal hoop which spun with a speed just sufficient to produce a centrifugal force of one g.

'I rigged it up,' Waldo continued, 'while I was bogged down in this problem of the Other s.p.a.ce. Gave me something to do.'

'This "Other s.p.a.ce" business - I still don't get it.'

'Think of another continuum much like our own and superposed on it the way you might lay one sheet of paper on another. The two s.p.a.ces aren't identical, but they are separated from each other by the smallest interval you can imagine - coextensive but not touching - usually. There is an absolute one-to- one, point-for-point correspondence, as I conceive it, between the two s.p.a.ces, but they are not necessarily the same size or shape.'

'Hey? Come again - they would have to be.'

'Not at all. Which has the larger number of points in it? A line an inch long, or a line a mile long?'

'A mile long, of course.'

'No. They have exactly the same number of points. Want me to prove it?'

'I'll take your word for it. But I never studied that sort of maths.'

'All right. Take my word for it then. Neither size nor shape is any impediment to setting up a full, point-for-point correspondence between two s.p.a.ces. Neither of the words is really appropriate. "Size" has to do with a s.p.a.ce's own inner structure, its dimensions in terms of its own unique constants. "Shape" is a matter which happens inside itself - or at least not inside our s.p.a.ce - and has to do with how it is curved, open or closed, expanding or contracting.'

Grimes shrugged. 'It all sounds like gibberish to me.' He returned to watching the cuckoo clock swing round and round its wheel.

'Sure it does,' Waldo a.s.sented cheerfully. 'We are limited by our experience.

Do you know how I think of the Other World?' The question was purely rhetorical. 'I think of it as about the size and shape of an ostrich egg, but nevertheless a whole universe, existing side by side with our own, from here to the farthest star. I know that it's a false picture, but it helps me to think about it that way.'

'I wouldn't know,' said Grimes, and turned himself around in the air. The compound motion of the clock's pendulum was making him a little dizzy.

'Say! I thought you turned off the caster?'

'I did,' Waldo agreed, and looked where Grimes was looking. The deKalbs were still squirming. 'I thought I did,' he said doubtfully, and turned to the caster's control board. His eyes then opened wider. 'But I did. It is turned off.'

'Then what the devil-'

'Shut up!' He had to think - think hard. Was the caster actually out of operation? He floated himself over to it, inspected it. Yes, it was dead, dead as the dinosaurs. Just to make sure he went back, a.s.sumed his primary waldoes, cut in the necessary circuits, and partially disa.s.sembled it.

But the deKalbs still squirmed.

The one deKalb set which had not been subjected to the Schneider treatment was dead; it gave out no power hum. But the others were working frantically, gathering power from -where?'

He wondered whether or not McLeod had said anything to Granmps Schneider about the casters from which the deKalbs were intended to pick up their power. Certainly he himself had not. It simply had not come into the conversation. But Schneider had said something.