Invaders from the Infinite Part 14

Wade took it into the airlock, and a moment later into s.p.a.ce with him.

His hand molecular-driving unit pulling him, he towed the machine into place, and with some difficulty got it practically motionless with respect of the two bodies, which were now lying against each other.

"Turn it a bit, Wade, so that the _Ancient Mariner_ is just in its range," came Arcot's thoughts. Wade did so. "Come on back and watch the fun."

Wade returned. Arcot and the others were busy placing a heavy emergency lead from the storeroom in the place of one of the broken leads. In five minutes they had it fixed where they wanted it.

Into the control room went Arcot, and started the power-room teleview plate. Connected into the system of view plates, the scene was visible now on all the plates in the s.h.i.+p. Well off to one side of the room, prepared for such emergencies, and equipped with individual power storage coils that would run it for several days, the view plate functioned smoothly.

"Now, we are ready," said Arcot. The Talsonian proved he understood Arcot's intentions by preceding him to the laboratory.

Arcot had two viewplates operating here. One was covering the scene as shown by the machine outside, and the other showed the power room.

Arcot stepped over to the artificial-matter machine, and worked swiftly on it. In a moment the power from the storage coils of the s.h.i.+p was flowing through the new cable, and into the machine. A huge ring appeared about the nose of the Thessian s.h.i.+p, fitting snugly over it. A terrific wrench--and it was free of the _Ancient Mariner_. The ring contracted and formed a chunk of the stuff free of the broken nose of the s.h.i.+p.

It was carried over to the wall of the _Ancient Mariner_, a smaller piece snipped off as before, and carried inside. A piece of perhaps half a ton ma.s.s. "I hope they use good stuff," grinned Arcot. The piece was deposited on the floor of the s.h.i.+p, and a disc formed of artificial matter plugged the hole in its side. Another took a piece of the relux from the broken Thessian s.h.i.+p, pushed it into the hole on the s.h.i.+p. The s.p.a.ce about the scene of operation was a crackling inferno of energy breaking down into heat and light. Arcot dematerialized his tremendous tools, and the wall of the _Ancient Mariner_ was neatly patched with relux smoothed over as perfectly as before. A second time, using some of the relux he had brought within the s.h.i.+p, and the inner wall was rebuilt. The job was absolutely perfect, save that now, where there had been lux, there was an outer wall of relux.

The main generator was crumpled up, and torn out. The auxiliary generators would have to carry the load. The great cables were swiftly repaired in the same manner, a perfect cylinder forming about them, and a piece of relux from the store Arcot had sliced from the enemy s.h.i.+p, welding them perfectly under enormous pressure, pressure that made them flow perfectly into one another as heat alone could not.

In less than half an hour the s.h.i.+p was patched up, the power room generally repaired, save for a few minor things that had to be replaced from the stores. The main generator was gone, but that was not an essential. The door was straightened and the job done.

In an hour they were ready to proceed.

Chapter XIV

INTERGALACTIC s.p.a.cE

"Well, Sirius has retreated a bit," observed Arcot. The star was indeed several trillions of miles away. Evidently they had not been motionless as they had thought, but the interference of the Thessian s.h.i.+p had thrown their machine off.

"Shall we go back, or go on?" asked Morey.

"The s.h.i.+p works. Why return?" asked Wade. "I vote we go on."

"Seconded," added Arcot.

"If they who know most of the s.h.i.+p vote for a continuance of the journey, then a.s.suredly we who know so little can only abide by their judgment. Let us continue," said Zezdon Afthen gravely.

s.p.a.ce was suddenly black about them. Sirius was gone, all the jewels of the heavens were gone in the black of swift flight. Ten seconds later Arcot lowered the s.p.a.ce-control. Black behind them the night of s.p.a.ce was p.r.i.c.ked by points of light, the infinite mult.i.tude of the stars.

Before them lay--nothing. The utter emptiness of s.p.a.ce between the galaxies.

"Thlek Styrs! What happened?" asked Morey in amazement, his pet Venerian phrase rolling out in his astonishment.

"Tried an experiment, and it was overly successful," replied Arcot, a worried look on his face. "I tried combining the Thessian high speed _time_ distortion with our high _speed_ s.p.a.ce distortion--both on low power. 'There ain't no sich animals,' as the old agriculturist remarked of the giraffe. G.o.d knows what speed we hit, but it was plenty. We must be ten thousand light years beyond the galaxy."

"That's a fine way to start the trip. You have the old star maps to get back however, have you not?" asked Wade.

"Yes, the maps we made on our first trip out this way are in the cabinet. Look 'em up, will you, and see how far we have to go before we reach the cosmic fields?"

Arcot was busy with his instruments, making a more accurate determination of their distance from the "edge" of the galaxy. He adopted the figure of twelve thousand five hundred light years as the probable best result. Wade was back in a moment with the information that the fields lay about sixteen thousand light years out. Arcot went on, at a rate that would reach the fields in two hours.

Several hours more were spent in measurements, till at last Arcot announced himself satisfied.

"Good enough--back we go." Again in the control room, he threw on the drive, and shot through the twenty-seven thousand light years of cosmic ray fields, and then more leisurely returned to the galaxy. The star maps were strangely off. They could follow them, but only with difficulty as the general configuration of the constellations that were their guides were visibly altered to the naked eye.

"Morey," said Arcot softly, looking at the constellation at which they were then aiming, and at the map before him, "there is something very, very rotten. The Universe either 'ain't what it used to be' or we have traveled in more than s.p.a.ce."

"I know it, and I agree with you. Obviously, from the degree of alteration off the constellations, we are off by about 100,000 years.

Question: how come? Question: what are we going to do about it?"

"Answer one: remembering what we observed _in re_ Sirius, I suspect that the interference of that Thessian s.h.i.+p, with its time-field opposing our s.p.a.ce-field did things to our time-frame. We were probably thrown off then.

"As to the second question, we have to determine number one first. Then we can plan our actions."

With Wade's help, and by coming to rest near several of the stars, then observing their actual motions, they were able to determine their time-status. The estimate they made finally was of the order of eighty thousand years in the past! The Thessian s.h.i.+p had thrown them that much out of their time.

"This isn't all to the bad," said Morey with a sigh. "We at least have all the time we could possibly use to determine the things we want for this fight. We might even do a lot of exploring for the archeologists of Earth and Venus and Ortol and Talso. As to getting back--that's a question."

"Which is," added Arcot, "easy to answer now, thank the good Lord. All we have to do is wait for our time to catch up with us. If we just wait eighty thousand years, eight hundred centuries, we will be in our own time."

"Oh, I think waiting so long would be boring," said Wade sarcastically.

"What do you suggest we do in the intervening eighty millenniums? Play cards?"

"Oh, cards or chess. Something like that," grinned Arcot. "Play cards, calculate our fields--and turn on the time rate control."

"Oh--I take it back. You win! Take all! I forgot all about that," Wade smiled at his friend. "That will save a little waiting, won't it."

"The exploring of our worlds would without doubt be of infinite benefit to science, but I wonder if it would not be of more direct benefit if we were to get back to our own time, alive and well. Accidents always happen, and for all our weapons, we might easily meet some animal which would put an abrupt and tragic finish to our explorations. Is it not so?" asked Stel Felso Theu.

"Your point is good, Stel Felso Theu. I agree with you. We will do no more exploring than is necessary, or safe."

"We might just as well travel slowly on the time r.e.t.a.r.der, and work on the way. I think the thing to do is to go back to Earth, or better, the solar system, and follow the sun in its path."

They returned, and the desolation that the sun in its journey pa.s.ses through is nothing to the utter, oppressive desolation of empty s.p.a.ce between the stars, for it has its family of planets--and it has no conscious thought.

The Sun was far from the point that it had occupied when the travelers had left it, billions on billions of miles further on its journey around the gravitational center of our galactic universe, and in the eighty millenniums that they must wait, it would go far.

They did not go to the planets now, for, as Arcot said in reply to Stel Felso Theu's suggestion that they determine more accurately their position in time, life had not developed to an extent that would enable them to determine the year according to our calendar.

So for thirty thousand years they hung motionless as the sun moved on, and the little spots of light, that were worlds, hurled about it in a mad race. Even Pluto, in its three-hundred-year-long track seemed madly gyrating beneath them; Mercury was a line of light, as it swirled about the swiftly moving sun.

But that thirty thousand years was thirty days to the men of the s.h.i.+p.

Their time rate immensely r.e.t.a.r.ded, they worked on their calculations.

At the end of that month Arcot had, with the help of Morey and Wade, worked out the last of the formulas of artificial matter, and the machines had turned out the last graphical function of the last branch of research that they could discover. It was a time of labor for them, and they worked almost constantly, stopping occasionally for a game of some sort to relax the nervous tension.

At the end of that month they decided that they would go to Earth.