Chapter IV: Expansion!

Then the vehicle cooled rapidly. Soon we had the heaters going. The coldness of space enveloped us penetrating the vehicle’s walls. But with the heaters we managed to be comfortable.

Dr. Weatherby sat at the instrument table. His chronometer there showed 5 A.M. We had started at 4 A.M. On one of the distant dials the miles were registering in units of a thousand. The dial-pointer was nearing XX6. Six thousand miles:

Dr. Weatherby glanced up as I appeared. Alice and Dolores, and Jim with them, had gone astern to prepare a broth. We were all of us still feeling a bit shaky, though the sense of lightness had worn off.

Dr. Weatherby had a chart on the table. It showed our solar system. The sun was at its center, and the planetary orbits in concentric circles around it. The planets and our own moon and a few of the larger comets and asteroids were all shown, their positions given progressively for each hour beginning at our starting time.

“I’m heading this way, Leonard. Holding the general plane in which the planets lie.” His finger traced a line from the earth, past the moon, past Mars. Jupiter and Saturn lay over to one side, and Neptune to the other. Uranus was far on the opposite side, beyond the sun.

Dr. Weatherby added, “The moon is drawing us now. But I shall shortly turn a neutral side toward it, and Mars will draw us. We are more than a freely falling body. We are being pulled downward.”

I sat beside him. “What is our velocity now?”

He gestured toward a dial, an ingenious affair. He had already explained its workings, the lessening rate of the earth’s gravitational pull shown by a hair-spring balance as a figure on the dial.

“Three thousand miles an hour, Leonard.” But as I watched, the figure moved to 4; and then to 5, 6 and 7.

The moon, nearly full, lay below us, ahead of us, white, glittering and cold, with the black firmament and the stars clustering about it. We were falling bow down. Overhead, above our blunt stern, the giant crescent earth hung across the firmament. It was still dull red; its configurations of land and water were plainly visible. A silver sunlight edged it.

“Ah, the sun, Leonard!” Abruptly we had emerged from the earth’s conical shadow into the sunlight. But the heavens remained black. The stars blazed with a cold, white gleam as before. And behind us was the white sun with its corona of flame leaping from it.

* * * * *

I have said we were falling—our projectile falling bow down, like a plummet. Gazing through the window it seemed so. But the effect was psychological. I could as readily picture us on a level, proceeding onward.

It was as though we were poised within a giant hollow globe of black glass, star encrusted. There could be no standards of up, or down; it was all as the mind chanced to conceive it. But within the vehicle itself, its soundless, vibrationless, level floor beneath our feet, a complete sense of normality remained.

“Dr. Weatherby,” I said, “that model . . . you remember, it grew gigantic. But we . . . we’re still the same size at which we started?”

For an hour past, a thousand questions had been seething in my mind. This navigation of space was clear enough. All my life scientists had been discussing it. We were moving now at a velocity of some twelve thousand miles an hour. But what was that? Less than the crawling of an ant using the equator of the earth as a race track! Twelve thousand miles an hour—or twelve billion—would get us nowhere among the distant stars in a lifetime!

Dr. Weatherby answered my spoken question: “We are only very little larger than when we started, Leonard. An infinitesimal fraction, for our velocity is nothing as yet. I’ll use the Elton Beta ray once we get farther out.”

He turned to his switches. Through the window I saw the firmament swing slightly. He was navigating, heading for some distant realm beyond all the stars that we could see, all the stars that could exist out there. This tiny vehicle, threading its way. How did he, how could he possibly know his way?

I asked him bluntly, and he looked up from his chart with a smile. “Leonard, in five minutes I could tell you every remaining fundamental of the laws which are governing us. I will tell you, but I want Jim to hear it too. And I’m absorbed now in getting out past the asteroids. A little later, I’ll make it clear.”

We dropped past the moon at a distance of perhaps a hundred thousand miles. We were then some two hundred and forty thousand miles from earth. It was nearly noon, with the earth standard time of Dr. Weatherby’s home. We had been traveling eight hours; constantly accelerating, our velocity at noon had reached a thousand miles a minute.

The moon, as we passed it, floated upward with a quite visible movement. It was a magnificent sight, though the smallest of telescopes on earth brought it visually nearer than it was now.

We ate our first meal, slept, settled down to the routine of life on the vehicle. Another twelve hours passed. Our velocity had reached then a thousand miles a second. But that was only the one hundred and eighty-sixth part of the velocity of light!

We were now—with an average rate of five hundred miles a second from the time we left—some twenty-one million and six hundred thousand miles from earth. Half way to Mars! But in four hours more the red planet floated upward past us. Dr. Weatherby kept well away—a million miles his instrument showed as he measured the planet’s visible diameter.

We had now reached a velocity of some twenty thousand miles a second.

“I shall hold it at that,” Dr. Weatherby said. “It’s too crowded in here, too dangerous.”

We traversed the asteroid region at about that rate. It was a tedious, tense voyage, so dangerous that for nearly five hours one of us was always at the tower window, to avoid a possible collision. The belt in here between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter was thick-strewn with asteroids. But none came near enough to endanger us.

We crossed Jupiter’s orbit. Again Dr. Weatherby accelerated to one hundred thousand miles a second, but it was over an hour before we crossed Saturn’s orbit, four hundred million miles further on. We went no faster for a time.

At this velocity it was tedious. Uranus’s orbit at seventeen hundred million miles from our sun; Neptune at twenty-seven hundred million. And then that last outpost of the solar system, Xavion, discovered in 1964. The planet was at the opposite point of its orbit. We could not see it. Our own sun had long since dwindled into invisibility.

At last we were away! Launched into the realms of outer stellar space, plunging onward at a hundred thousand miles a second. But ahead of us the giant stars showed no change. As imperturbably distant in their aspect as when we started.

We, Jim and I, had had many hours of futile discussion: some in our own room, but more in the little tower where we sat on watch, gazing ahead at the motionless stars, our eyes at the small search-telescopes with which we swept the space into which the projectile was dropping.

We had seen many asteroids, but none near enough to be dangerous. And we passed the hours wondering what it was Dr. Weatherby had to tell us. How did he know where he was going? What was his direction? In all this chaos of immeasurable, unfathomable distance, of what avail to attempt any set direction? By what points could he navigate? It was unthinkable.

And more unthinkable: we had attained a maximum velocity of over one hundred thousand miles a second, only a little more than half the velocity of light. The _nearest_ star we knew to be over four light-years away. Light, traveling one hundred and eighty-six thousand, four hundred miles a second, took 4.35 years to reach that star. At this rate, we would take some eight years!

And this was the _nearest star_! Others were a thousand . . . tens of thousands . . . a hundred thousand times farther! Eighty thousand years, even eight hundred thousand years, we would have to travel to reach the distant nebulae! And even then, what realms of dark and empty space might lie beyond! It was unthinkable.

“He’ll explain when he gets ready,” said Jim.

* * * * *

And he did. He called us into the instrument room, shortly after we crossed the orbit of Xavion. He spoke with a slow, precise phrasing: the careful phrasing of a scientist intent upon conveying his exact meaning.

“I think I told you once, Leonard, as a matter of actuality I stumbled upon this thing—these laws which are to govern our flight from now onward. They are definite laws, inherent in all matter.

“We are about to undergo an experience stranger, I think, than any man has undergone before. But not because of any intricate devices with which I have equipped this vehicle. Not at all. Merely the progressive workings of natural laws.

“I have experimented with them for some years. I think I understand them, though I am not sure. But their character, the actual, tangible result of what shortly will happen to us, that, I understand perfectly.”

“What are the laws?” Jim demanded.

He gestured. “In a moment, Jim. I will say first that all this is merely a question of velocity. Matter, as it exists everywhere, is, as you well know, in varying states of velocity.

“And as the velocity changes, so does every other attribute of the substance. A group of electrons inherent in a lightning bolt, the intimes of a flying beam of light, are very different in temporary character from those of a bar of iron. But only different by virtue of their temporary velocity.

“Do I make myself plain? Any substance, for a very brief period, tends to maintain its integrity, its independent existence. But countless forces and conditions are assailing it. Wood burns, or rots. Iron rusts. The human body—a conglomeration of cells loosely clinging into a semblance of an independent entity—grows old, dies, disintegrates.

“Nothing is in a permanent state, a permanent condition of substance. The change may be slowly progressive. Or it may be sudden and violent.

“I’ll be more specific. The Elton ray, acting upon the sensitive intimes of electrite, brings a sudden—and to that extent, unnatural—change.

“An added velocity was imparted to this vehicle and we left the earth. The Elton current is operating the vehicle now. We have reached, or very nearly reached, the limit of velocity we can attain by using the force of celestial gravity—one hundred thousand miles a second.

“As I told you, however, we can now use the Elton Beta ray. Our vehicle, carrying the source of the ray forward, will presently attain a velocity—” He stopped, smiled gently, and added, “To our finite minds, it will be infinite. There will presently be no standards by which we can conceive it.”

I would have interrupted him with a question, but he raised his hand. “In a moment, Leonard; then I want you and Jim to ask me any questions you like. All this that I have said, is prefatory. The question is one solely of velocity. The rest is automatic. The natural laws governing the attributes of matter in relation to its velocity are these:

“First: A substance whose velocity is increased loses density proportionately. For instance, our vehicle, I consider it as a whole, you understand. As its velocity increases, it becomes less dense in substance. Comparatively less dense. Everything is comparative, of course. We ourselves have undergone the same change.”

“A loss of density!” I exclaimed. “Then, of course, expanding, becoming more diffuse.”

“Exactly, Leonard. And that is the second law. Our _size_ is growing directly in proportion to our growing velocity.”

I grasped it now. An infinite velocity had suddenly been imparted to the model of the vehicle. It had expanded, like a puff of vapor, over all the sky! Dr. Weatherby went on in his same careful voice.

“These two changes—a loss of density and a gain in size—have been going on ever since we left the earth. They amount to little as yet. But presently I am going to increase our velocity immeasurably. External objects—the stars out there, you will see the change when you look at them.

“Do you understand me? The principle is obvious. A cold, dark star is small and dense. And moves slowly. A giant star is hot, of little density, and it has an enormous velocity.” He paused.

Jim interjected, “I think we understand you, Dr. Weatherby. With this infinite velocity, we will pass beyond the stars. And growing in size . . . to be gigantic.”

“So that, proportionately, the stars will shrink to atoms,” said Alice.

Jim nodded. “Yes. I understand that. It sort of makes you gasp.”

“But,” I exclaimed, “Dr. Weatherby, you have held communication with other living minds, other beings, somewhere out here. Dolores’s thought-waves.”

“Yes,” he said. “Thought-waves are infinitely faster than light. No one has ever—”

“I mean,” I went on, “we are hoping to reach those other beings. But how—this is what Jim and I can’t understand—how do you know where you are going? Might we not be heading directly away? Or perhaps Dolores is receiving the thought-waves progressively stronger and thus guiding us.”

“No,” Dolores spoke up. “It is difficult to receive the thoughts. There has been no time since we left—” She stopped, and added, “That makes me realize, didn’t Alice leave us a moment ago?”

“Yes,” said Jim. “It’s time for lunch.”

Dolores left her grandfather’s side. “I must go help her.”

Alice had slipped quietly away. Dolores now joined her in the galley.

Dr. Weatherby went on; “I remember remarking to you, Leonard, that there would be no need for navigation. We will grow, with an infinite velocity, to an infinitely gigantic size. Conversely, all this—” He waved his hand at the window, the firmament of white blazing suns—“all this immeasurable space we see out there will shrink to a size infinitely small. It will, later on, be smaller than our vehicle itself. Smaller than my body, my hand.”

His voice rose to a sudden vehemence. “Don’t you get the conception now? All this, our celestial space, will shrink to a pinhead—an atom. We will emerge from it into some tremendous greater emptiness, some greater space. As much greater as the space of a bedroom interior would be to the head of a pin lying on a bureau! What matter whether we emerge on one side of the pinhead or the other? The distance will be infinitesimal!”

What matter indeed! I clung to the conception. So simple, yet so vast! And suddenly there sprang before me a vision of our little earth back there, already invisible, circling its tiny orbit, a mere nothing in the cosmos of infinite nature. An electron! Less than that—the merest infinite particle of an electron.

This whole universe of stars, merely a cluster of tiny particles, clinging together to form an atom of something else! And trillions of such atoms making up the head of a pin, lying on someone’s bureau!

Dr. Weatherby’s voice quieted. “Suppose ultimately, we were to cross our atom and emerge in exactly the wrong direction. We would find no vastly great emptiness, but merely other atoms like our own, going downward, so to speak, into the pin’s head, instead of merging from it.

“But that cannot happen. Nature, in all its natural phenomena, always chooses the path of least resistance. We could not increase our velocity without adequate distance to transverse, nor increase our size without adequate emptiness to fill.

“You see! We may be going wrongly now. It makes no difference; the ultimate distance will be infinitesimal. But I know that by all natural laws we are seeking greater spaces. We will find, beyond these stars, an infinitely greater emptiness.

“Our size ultimately will fill it. But we will have turned to seek an emptiness still vaster, until, at last, freed from these clusters of substance which themselves are clinging together to form that pinhead, we will emerge.”