The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol V Part 8

Five o'clock in the evening of that same day came the news of another safe disappearance. Phil got his tip over the phone, and in fifteen minutes was at the scene. It was too much like the others to go into detail about; a six-foot portable safe had suddenly disappeared right in front of the eyes of the office staff of The Epicure, a huge restaurant and cafeteria that fed five thousand people three times a day. In its place stood a ragged, rusty old Ford coupe body. He went away from there, shaking his head.

Then suddenly in the midst of his dinner, he jumped up, and ran. An idea had leaped into his head.

"Right after one of these things pops is the time to take a peek at Tony," he said to himself, and immediately he was on the way.

But how to get his peep was not so easy a problem. When he alighted from his cab a block away from Tony's building, he was hesitant about approaching it. Tony knew him, and might see him first. Phil circled the brick building, keeping under cover or far enough away; all around it was a belt of thirty feet of lawn between the building and the sidewalk. Ought he have called the police and given them his idea? Or should he wait till darkness and see what he could do alone?

Then suddenly he saw her. Across the street, standing in the shelter of a delivery truck in front of an apartment, she was observing Tony's building intently. The aristocratic chin, the brightness of the eyes, the waves of her hair, and the general sunny expression! It could not be anyone else. Post haste he ran across the street.

"Pardon me!" he cried excitedly, lifting his hat and then digging hastily into his inner pocket. "I'm sure you must be the--"

"Well, the nerve!" the young woman said icily, and pointing her chin at the opposite horizon she walked haughtily away.

By that time Phil had dug out his picture and was running after her.

"Please," he said, "just a moment!" And he held the picture out in front of her face.

"Now, where in the world--?" She looked at him in puzzled and indignant inquiry, and then burst out laughing.

"It is you, isn't it?" Phil asked. "What are you laughing at?"

"Oh, you looked so abject. I'm sure your intentions must be good. Now tell me where you got my picture."

"Let us walk this way," suggested Phil, leading away from Tony's building.

And, as they walked, he told her the story. When he got through she stood and looked at him a long time in silence.

"You look square to me," she said. "You're working on my side already. Will you help me."

"I'll do anything--anything--" Phil said, and couldn't think of any other way of expressing his willingness, for the wonderful eyes bore radiantly upon him.

"First I must tell you my story," she began. "But before I can do so, you must promise me that it is to remain an absolute secret. You're a newspaper man--"

Phil gave his promise readily.

"My father is Professor Bloomsbury at the University of Chicago. He has been experimenting in mathematical physics, and I have been a.s.sisting him. He has succeeded in proving experimentally the concept of tensors. A tensor is a mathematical expression for the fact that s.p.a.ce is smooth and flat, in three dimensions, only at an infinite distance from matter; in the neighborhood of a particle of matter, there is a pucker or a wrinkle in s.p.a.ce. My father has found that by suddenly removing a portion of matter from out of s.p.a.ce, the pucker flattens out. If the matter is heavy enough and its removal sudden enough, there is a violent disturbance of s.p.a.ce. By planning all the steps carefully my father has succeeded in swinging a section of s.p.a.ce on a pivot through an angle of 180 degrees, and causing two portions of s.p.a.ce to change places through hypers.p.a.ce, or as you might express it popularly, through the fourth dimension."

Phil held his hands to his head.

"It is not difficult," she went on smiling. "Loan me your pocket knife and a piece of paper from your notebook. If I cut out a rectangular piece of paper from this sheet and mount it on a pivot or shaft at A B, I can rotate it through 180 degrees, just like a child's teeter-totter, so that X will be where Y originally was. That is in two dimensions. Now, simply add one dimension all the way round and you will have what daddy is doing with s.p.a.ce. He does it by shoving fifty or a hundred pounds of lead right out of s.p.a.ce; the sudden flattening out of the tensors causes a section of s.p.a.ce to flop around, and two portions of s.p.a.ce change places. The first time he tried it, his desk disappeared, and we've never seen it again. We've thought it was somewhere out in hypers.p.a.ce; but this terrible story of yours about disappearing safes, and the fact that you have this picture, means that someone has got the desk."

"Surely you must have suspected that long ago, when the disappearances first began?" Phil suggested.

"I've just returned from Europe," said Miss Bloomsbury. "I was tremendously puzzled when I got my first newspapers in New York and read about the safes. Gradually I gathered all the news on the subject, and it seemed most reasonable to suspect this gangster engineer."

"Great minds and same channels," Phil smiled. "But your father. Why didn't he speak up when the safes began to pop?"

"Ha! ha!" she laughed a tinkly little laugh. "My father doesn't know what safes are for, nor who is President, nor that there has been a war. Mother and I take care of him, and he works on tensors. He has probably never heard about the safes."

"What were you going to do around here?" Phil asked, marveling at the courage of the girl who had come to look the situation over personally.

"I hadn't formed any definite plans. I just wanted to look about first."

"Well," said Phil, "as you will soon see by the papers, another safe has puffed out. It occurred to me that we might find out something by spying about here immediately after one of the disappearances. That's why I'm here. If you'll tell me where you live, or wait for me at some safe place, I'll come and report to you as soon as I find out anything."

"Oho! So that's the kind of a girl you think I am!" She laughed sunnily again. "No, Mr. Reporter. Either we reconnoiter together, or each on our own."

"Oh, together, by all means," said Phil so earnestly that she laughed again. "And since we'd better wait for darkness, let's have something to eat somewhere. I didn't finish my dinner."

Phil found Ione Bloomsbury in person to be even more wonderful than her photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent, too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like a tonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesy in her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost too much for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid his heart at her feet. It gave him a thrill that went to his head, to have her by his side, slipping along through the darkness toward Tony's building.

This building was a one-story brick affair with a vast amount of window s.p.a.ce. From the sidewalk they could see faint lights glowing within, but could make out no further details. They therefore selected the darkest side of the building, and made their way hurriedly across the lawn. Here, they found, they could see the crowding apparatus within the one long room fairly well. They looked into one window after another, making a circuit around the building, until Phil suddenly clutched the girl's arm.

"Look!" he whispered. "Straight ahead and a little to the left!"

At the place he indicated stood a tall safe. Across the top of its door were painted in gold letters, the words: "The Epicure."

"That's the safe that went to-night," whispered Phil. "That's all we need to know. Now, quick to a telephone!"

"Oh," said a gentle, ironic voice behind them, "not so quick!"

They whirled around and found themselves looking into two automatic pistols, and behind them in the light of the street lamps, the sardonic smile of Tony Costello.

"Charmed at your kind interest in my playthings, I'm sure," he purred. "Only it leaves me in an embarra.s.sing position. I'm not exactly sure what to do about it. Kindly step inside while I think."

Phil made a move sidewise along the wall.

"Stop!" barked Costello sharply. "Of course," his voice was quiet again, "that might be the simplest way out. I think I am within my legal rights if I shoot people who are trying to break into my property. Yet, that would be messy--not neat. Better step in. The window swings outward."

At the point of his pistols they clambered through the window, and he came in after them. He kept on talking, as though to himself, but loud enough for them to hear.

"Yes, we want some way out that is neater than that. Hm! Violence distresses me. Never liked Ed's rough methods. Yet, this is embarra.s.sing."

He turned to them.

"What did you really want here? I see that you are the Examiner's reporter, and that you are the lady of the photograph. What did you come here for? Ah, yes, the safe. Well, go over and look at it."

As they hesitated, he stamped his foot and shrilled crankily: "I mean it! Go, look at the safe! Is there anything else you want to know?"

"Yes," said Phil coolly, his self-control returning, "where are the other safes?"

"Oh. Anything to oblige. Last requests are a sort of point of honor, aren't they. Ought to grant them. Stand close to that safe!"

He backed away, his guns levelled at them. He laid down the right one, keeping the left one aimed, and moved some k.n.o.bs on a dial and threw over a big switch. A m.u.f.fled rumbling and whirring began somewhere; and then, slowly, a block of tables and apparatus ten feet square rose upward toward the ceiling. A section of the floor on which they stood came up, supported by columns, and now formed the roof of a room that had risen out of the floor. In it were four safes.

"Poor old Ed!" sighed Tony. "There was a time when he had a lot of good stuff put away down there. I've got six rooms like that. Well, the good old times are over."

He threw out the switch and the whole ma.s.s sank slowly and silently downward till the floor was level and there was no further sign of it. Then he backed away to another table, across the room from them, keeping his gun levelled.

"Too bad," he said. "I don't like to do these things. But--" he sighed deeply, "self-preservation. Now I'm going to flip you out, yes, out, into a strange region. I've never been there. I don't know if there is food or drink there. I hope so, for you'll never get back here."

Phil stiffened. He determined to leap and risk a shot. But he was too late. Tony's hand came down on a switch. There was a sudden, nauseating jar. The laboratory vanished.

There was only the safe, Ione Bloomsbury and himself, and a small circle of concrete floor extending to a dim little horizon a dozen feet away. Beyond that, nothing. Not blue, as the sky is. Not black, as dark, empty s.p.a.ces are. It suggested black, because there was no impression of light or color on the eyes; but it wasn't black. It was nothingness.

PART IV.

Marooned in Hypers.p.a.ce "I suppose you realize what he has done?" Miss Bloomsbury inquired.

"Couldn't be too sure, but it looks like plenty. What's the equation for it?" Beneath his jocularity, Phil felt a tremendous sinking within him. It looked serious, despite the fact that he did not understand it at all.

"He has swung us out into hypers.p.a.ce, or into the fourth dimension, as your newspaper readers might understand it, and has let us hang there. Remember our slip of paper. Suppose X and Y were swung out of the plane of the paper and allowed to remain at an angle with it. We are at an angle with s.p.a.ce, out in hypers.p.a.ce."

There was a period of bewilderment, almost panic, in which they both felt so physically weak that they had to sit down on the concrete and stare at each other mutely. But this pa.s.sed and their natural courage soon rea.s.serted itself. Their first thought was to take stock of what information they could get on their situation; and their first step was to venture as close as possible to the queer little horizon which lay almost at their very feet. It gave them a frightened feeling, as though they were standing high up on a precipice or tower.

To their surprise, the horizon receded as they walked toward it, always remaining about a dozen feet away from them. At first they walked on concrete and then came to a crumbly edge of it and found themselves stepping on hard, sandy earth. Later there was rock, sometimes granite-like, sometimes black and shiny. But what they saw underfoot was nothing, compared with the glimpses of things they got out in the surrounding emptiness. First there was a vast s.p.a.ce in which a soft light shone, and in which there were countless spheres of various sizes, motionlessly suspended. The spheres seemed to be made of wood, a green, sap-filled, unseasoned wood. The scene was visible for a few seconds, and vanished suddenly as they walked on. This astonished them; so they stepped back a pace or two and saw it again; and as they moved on, it disappeared again.

Then there was a great stretch of water in which the backs of huge monsters rolled and from which a hot wind blew for a few instants until they pa.s.sed on and the scene vanished. There was a short walk with nothing but emptiness, and then there appeared huge, oblique, cubistic looking rows of jagged rocks in wild, dizzy formations that didn't look possible; and farther on, after another interval of emptiness, a tangle of brown, ropey vines with black-green leaves on them, an immense s.p.a.ce filled with serpentine swinging loops and lengths of innumerable vines. Several loops projected so near them that they could have reached out and touched them had they wished.

"This is too much for me!" Phil gasped. "Have we gone crazy? Or did he kill us, and is this Purgatory?"

Ione smiled and shook her little head in which she had a goodly store of modern mathematics stored away.

"These must be glimpses of other 's.p.a.ces' besides our own s.p.a.ce. If we could see in four dimensions we could see them all spread out before us. But we can only perceive in three dimensions; therefore, as we walk through hypers.p.a.ce, past the different 's.p.a.ces' which are ranged about in it, we get a glimpse into such of them as are parallel with our own s.p.a.ce. Can you understand that?"

"Oh, yes," groaned Phil. "It sounds just about like it looks. But, don't mind me. Go on, have your fun."

"I've been thinking about those wooden spheres," continued Ione. "I'm sure they must be sections of trees that are cut crosswise by our 's.p.a.ce;' they grow in three dimensions, but only two of them are our dimensions and a third is strange to us. We see only three-dimensional sections of them, which are spheres. There is more of them, that we cannot see, in another dimension."

"Yes, yes. Just as plain as the Jabberwock!"

"Look! There's a real Jabberwock!" exclaimed Ione.

On ahead of them they saw a number of creatures that seemed to be made of painted wooden b.a.l.l.s in different colors, joined together.

"Tinkertoys!" exclaimed Phil. "Live ones! Big ones!"

The animals, though they looked for all the world as though they were made of painted wood, moved with jerky motions and clattered and snarled.

"There is probably more to them in another dimension," Ione said.

Suddenly one of the beasts approached them with a leap. There were two big eyes and two rows of teeth that came together with a snap, right on Phil's trouser-leg. He jerked himself away, sacrificing some square inches of trouser-leg, and, whirling around, kicked at the thing with all his force. It almost paralyzed his foot, for the animal seemed to be made of wood or bone. But it disappeared, and, as it did, both of them felt a queer, nauseating jolt. A few more minutes' walk brought them back to the safe without seeing any more s.p.a.ces; and the sight of its black iron bulk filled them with a home-like relief, which in a moment they recognized as a mockery.

"Are we on a sphere of some sort?" Phil asked.

"Probably on an irregular ma.s.s of matter," Ione replied, "part of which is Tony's concrete floor, and part of which comes out of some other dimension. This ma.s.s of matter is at one end of a long, bar-like portion of s.p.a.ce, the middle of which is pivoted in our world, somewhere in Chicago, and both ends of which are free in hypers.p.a.ce."

"Then," suggested Phil, "why can't we walk down to the axle on which it is balanced, and step out into Chicago?"

"Because there isn't any matter for us to walk on. We are not able to move about in s.p.a.ce, in three dimensions, you know. We can only get around in two dimensions, on the surface of matter."

"Well, let's try another exploration trip at right angles to our first one. After all, these 's.p.a.ces' are an interesting show, and I want to see some more."

They started out in the selected direction, and after a short walk got a glimpse of a vast s.p.a.ce dotted with stars and nebulae, with two bright moons sailing overhead. A few steps farther on was a wall of solid granite, near enough to touch with their hands. Again, there was an intensely active ma.s.s of weaving bright stripes and loops and circles, seeming to consist of light only, and making them dizzy in a few seconds. Ione wondered if it might not be something like an organic molecule on a large scale. Again, odd, queer, indescribable shapes and outlines would appear and disappear, obviously three-dimensional sections of multi-dimensional things, cut by s.p.a.ce. Once they pa.s.sed a place of intense cold and terrific noise and escaped destruction or lunacy only because it took them the merest instant to get past.

They arrived back at the safe, very much fatigued from the strain, their minds woefully confused. Hunger and thirst were beginning to thrust up their little reminders; and for the first time the terrors of their position, flung out into hypers.p.a.ce on a small, barren piece of matter, began to seem real.

After a rest they started out again. As Phil had touched, in kicking it, a creature from another "s.p.a.ce," perhaps they might find water and even food somewhere. They retraced their first steps to the spot where they had at first seen water. They found it again and were able to dip their hands into it. It was warm, and too salty to drink. They came to the place with the creepers or vines, and Phil reached out and seized one of them. It was heavy, rubbery, and elastic, stretching readily as he pulled it.

"These little lurches that we feel must be the snapping back of the s.p.a.ce-puckers as expressed by tensors," Ione remarked. "Every time matter goes in or out of s.p.a.ce, the nature of s.p.a.ce is altered."

"Well," observed Phil, releasing the vine, "I'd better be careful. If one of these things hauls me off here, our last bond with home is gone. I don't want to get lost in some other s.p.a.ce."

As he released the vines they snapped back to their places, and the forest of them dimmed a little and reappeared.

They made the round again, dodging cautiously past the point where they had previously found the "Tinkertoy" animals, and succeeded in getting past their snapping teeth. But no promise of food or water did they find anywhere.

"Looks like we're sunk," observed Phil, as they dropped down on the concrete to rest, leaning their backs against the safe.

How time counted in hypers.p.a.ce, neither Phil nor Ione could tell; Phil knew that his watch was running. He knew that it was ages and ages that he sat with his back against the safe, reviewing all the events of his put life, and thinking of this ignominious end to a lively career! He swore half aloud; then suddenly looked at Ione, ready to apologize. He found her weeping silently.

"I should never have let you come into the building with me," he stammered in confusion at her tears.

"Oh, what do I care what becomes of me!" she exclaimed angrily. "But who will take care of poor daddy? He doesn't even know when it's time to eat." And she burst into a fresh fit of weeping.

Phil bent his head in the dumbness of profound despair.

PART V.

The Reversible Equation Despair, however, is a luxury. Necessity is a stimulus. With the parchings of thirst and the gnawings of hunger, the two young people ceased swearing and weeping. Phil got up and paced about and sat down again. Ione's tears stopped and dried, and she sat and thought.