Chapter II

We sat in a little arbor beside the house, with its breakfast table already laid. Dr. Gryce, Brett, and myself. Martt was with Frannie preparing the meal. It was evidence of the simplicity which marked the Gryce household. In these days of mechanical devices for almost everything--and the usual multiplicity of servants--there was not a meal prepared for Dr. Gryce save by his daughter.

I was very curious to learn why they had sent for me; but I had no need to question, for at once Dr. Gryce plunged into it.

"I hope, Frank, that you can stay--well, at least a few days with us. Can you?"

I stared. The Day Officer of the Manhattan Interplanetary Postal Division was undoubtedly already in a rage at my absence. I said so. "A few days? Dr. Gryce, I dread every conjunction that brings these accursed mails--my divisional officers think it's a crime even to eat or sleep when a planet is near us."

He smiled. "I imagine I can fix it."

"Then I'll stay, of course. If you could fix the planetary orbits so that they were parabolas, Dr. Gryce, it would suit me exactly."

He and Brett both were smiling, but Dr. Gryce's smile was momentary, for at once that indefinable air of trouble returned to him.

"Frank," he said, "I hardly know how to begin telling you what we have done--are about to do. It seems curious also--I know it will strike you so, you have been such a friend to me and my children--that during all these years we have given you no hint of our purpose."

"We have told no one," Brett put in: "no one in the world."

I said nothing, but my curiosity increased. It was doubtless of grave import, this thing they had to tell me; the solemnity, earnestness which stamped them both was unmistakable.

For a moment Dr. Gryce was silent; then he said abruptly, "You know, Frank, all my life I have been engaged with science. In a measure, I have been successful; there are a few devices which will bear my name when I am gone."

I nodded. "I know that very well, Dr. Gryce."

"But all those things," he added earnestly, "all that I stand for to the world, has really been of little importance to me. My main labor, goal, dream, if you will, I have never told anyone--not a living person except my children. For ten years past Brett has been helping me. And though you would hardly believe it, for the last year or two Martt and Frannie have been of material aid in the accomplishment of my purpose."

"What branch of science?" I asked. "And you've accomplished it? You're ready to give it to the world?"

"Accomplished it--yes. But we are not ready to give it to the world--perhaps we never shall. There would be evil in it--evil diabolical--in untrained or unscrupulous hands. But we are ready to test it--a practical test. Tonight, Frank, my boy Brett is going upon an adventure----"

The fear which had been lurking in his eyes leaped to stamp his other features. He was afraid for Brett--afraid of this thing they were going to do. He had stopped abruptly; and more quietly he added:

"I want you to understand me, Frank, and so for a moment we must be wholly theoretical. This thing we are about to do involves the construction of our whole material universe. You know, of course, that no limit has been found to the divisibility of matter?"

His sudden question confused me. "You mean," I stammered, "that things can be infinitely small?"

"That there is no limit to smallness," Brett put in. "An atom--an electron--they are mere words. Within them conceivably might be a space with stars, planets, suns--worlds of their own so tiny that compared to the Space in which they roam that Space would seem--and would be--illimitable. Picture that, Frank. And picture upon one of those worlds inhabitants of proportionate smallness. What would they see, feel or think of the universe? Would they not conceive it about as we do? Picture them with powerful microscopes, looking downward into the matter composing their world. They would be aware of molecules, atoms--they would gaze down into Space unending. Another realm within their own. And within that one--others and yet others to infinity. The conception confuses you, Frank? It need not. Each of those realms is tiny--or large--according to the viewpoint. There can be no such thing as absolute size."

"That is what I mean," Dr. Gryce interrupted eagerly. "Absolute size--how can you conceive it? You can not. A thing is large or small only in relation to something else smaller or larger."

He waved his hand to the rolling landscape with the morning light and shadow upon it, visible through the arbor.

"There is our everyday world, Frank. How big is it? You can not say. Millimeters, meters, kilometers, helans, light-years--those are only words with which we designate a comparison. Compared to what our microscopes show us, this world of ours is very large, but compared to the spaces between the stars--the stars themselves--it is very small. Try then to imagine its absolute size. You can not, because there is no such thing. A universe within what we call an atom--another realm within an atom of matter upon one of the worlds of _that_ universe--is not an extraordinary state of smallness _until we compare it with ourselves_.

"And this world of ours. It is normal to us; of no absolute size whatever--neither large nor small--until we compare it to something else. But suppose we visualize larger realms? Suppose we say these planets, stars--all the starry universe within our ken and this visual space which contains them--suppose we imagine all that to be contained within the atom of a particle of matter of some comparatively still larger realm? At once our world and ourselves shrink into smallness. Where a moment ago we had seemed large, now we seem small. Yet that other gigantic world within which we are contained--if we could live in it our telescopes would show us still larger Space unending. We would feel tiny--and of actuality _we would be tiny_--contemplating Space and size so much larger."

"And there you have infinity of Space," Brett added, as his father paused. "Unending Space both smaller and larger than ourselves. We--everything of which we can be physically aware--represent no more than a single step in the ladder which has no bottom nor no top. You can not conceive an end in either direction. There is no such thing. Nor--as Father says--can you declare anything to be small or large considered by itself alone. This then is Space as we conceive it to be. Illimitable, unending--infinite Space."

The conception momentarily seemed wholly beyond my grasp. What I would have answered when for a moment Dr. Gryce and Brett paused I do not know, for from the house the approaching voices of Martt and Frannie reached us.

"You'll fall, I tell you! Frannie, give me that!"

"I won't."

"You'll trip over the wires and you'll fall and smash it!"

"I won't."

The sound of a crash. And Martt's voice, "There, I told you!"

They were upon us, wheeling the tray laden with breakfast; Martt, flushed, laughing. "Oh, hello, Frank--they didn't switch you wrong, did they? Frannie broke the heater coils--if the breakfast gets cold, don't blame me."

And Frannie, also flushed and laughing and a trifle rueful over the mishap. Dressed in a blue blouse and widely flaring, knee-length trousers, with her golden hair tossing on her shoulders. The picture of a little housewife, of early morning informality. I thought I had never seen her so beautiful.