Chapter III

"That, Frank, is our conception of the infinity of Space."

With breakfast finished Brett had resumed the discussion. We were all seated in the arbor. Martt and Frannie momentarily were quiet, seemingly keenly interested in the impression upon me which they anticipated would come from their father's disclosures.

Dr. Gryce said, "The idea of Time unending is indissolubly bound with the concept of infinite Space. You will realize, Frank, for some centuries it has been understood that Time and Space are inextricably blended. We think instinctively of Space as a tangible entity--of length, breadth and thickness. And of Time, as intangible. Such really is not the case. Space has three dimensions--but Time also has a dimension."

"Length," Martt put in. "It sounds like a play on words, but--"

"It isn't," Frannie finished for him. "I can't imagine anything clearer than that Time has length."

Dr. Gryce ignored them. "You must understand also that Time as we conceive it can not exist except as the measurement of a _length_ between two events. And what is an event? It presupposes the existence of _Matter_, does it not? Matter thus is introduced into the universe. It also can not be independent of Time and Space. So long as anything material exists, there must be Space for it to exist in; and Time to mark the passing of its existence.

"Of our universe, then, we now have Matter, Time and Space. There is a fourth--shall I say, element? It also is interdependent with each of the other three. It is _Motion_. You know, of course, that there can be no such thing as absolute Motion."

"Or absolute Time," Frannie put in.

"That we will discuss later," Dr. Gryce said quickly, "since it is more intricate of conception. Absolute Motion is impossible and non-existent. We can say a thing moves fast or slowly, _only in relation to the movement of something else_. One word more. I want you to realize, Frank, how wholly dependent each of these factors is upon the other. _Matter_, for instance, is an entity persisting in Space and Time. _Motion_ is the simultaneous change of the position of Matter in Space and Time. A thing was _here, then_; it is _there, now_. That is Motion. You see how you can not deal with one without involving the others?"

"Say, Father, why don't you tell him what we're going to do?" Martt demanded. "Frank, listen--tonight Brett and I----"

"But I'm going, too," Frannie declared.

"You're not!"

I saw again that look of fear in old Dr. Gryce's eyes. His children--the spirit of youth with its lust for adventure--they were eager and excited. But Dr. Gryce saw beyond that--saw the danger. . .

He said gravely, "There is no possibility of my making you understand the details, Frank, until we have gone into the matter thoroughly. But as Martt implies, you are no doubt impatient. I will tell you then, briefly, that for most of my life I have been delving into this subject--Matter, Space, Time and Motion illimitable. Longing to investigate this immense material universe which I believe exists. But we humans are fettered, Frank. Like an ant, living for a brief moment enchained with a cobweb to a twig and trying to envisage the earth."

His voice now was trembling with emotion. "I was satisfied to see with my own eyes some little part into infinity. I invented what we--my children and I--call the myrdoscope. I will explain it presently. Suffice it now to say that there are normally invisible rays, akin to light, crossing Space, and I have made them visible. We captured them--saw after a myriad trials unavailing, occasional vague glimpses of the beyond which came to us. It might have satisfied me, but three years ago, one night, Brett saw----"

He paused, looking at Brett. Martt and Frannie were breathless, with eyes fixed on me.

Brett said, and his voice had a queer, solemn hush to it, "I was looking through the myrdoscope. We had seen blurred, brief glimpses of a realm----"

"Beyond the stars," Frannie breathed.

"Yes, beyond the stars. A realm seemingly of forest, or something growing. Silvery patches--you might imagine they were water, or light shining upon something that glistened. They were always haphazard, these glimpses. We caught them, not always from one direction--seemingly from everywhere. A realm encompassing--enclosing--our whole star-filled Space.

"With the labor of years, which you, Frank, will appreciate to some degree, Father has charted what for our own little ken we might call absolute points in Space. Landmarks, say, of this outer realm. With our whirling earth, the ever-changing planets and stars, only this outer realm seemed of fixed position. We could sometimes return our gaze to the same landmark--a tremendous crescent-shaped patch of silver, for instance, which several times we succeeded in re-finding.

"It was near this patch at which I was one night gazing, when through some vagary of the ray bearing its image--or some difference in our crude apparatus--the scene suddenly clarified. And magnified as though at once I had leaped a million light-years toward it.

"I saw then a magnified section of the larger scene. The patch of silver appeared now as a shimmering, opalescent liquid. A segment of shore-front; and this all in a moment, again magnified. Upon a bluish bank of soft vegetation, with the opal liquid beside it, I saw a girl half reclining. A girl of human form, but transfigured by a beauty more than human. A girl of a civilization behind our own--or perhaps one in advance--I do not know. She was robed in a short, simple garment more like a glistening, glowing silver veil than a dress. Her hair was long--a tangled dark mass. She reclined there in an attitude of ease and the abandonment of maidenly solitude. I say that she was more than beautiful--oh, Frank----"

Brett's voice had suddenly lost the precise exactitude of the scientist. He seemed to have forgotten his father--Martt and Frannie; it was as though he were confiding his human emotions only to me.

"Beautiful, Frank. A strange, wild beauty, with a curious ethereal aspect to it. I don't know--it's indescribable. Human--half human, but half divine."

* * * * *

He checked himself; the scientist in him again became uppermost; but though he now spoke with careful phrasing, his face remained flushed.

"It was some moments before I saw additional details. And then I realized that the girl was not alone. Upon her bare feet were a sort of sandal with thongs crossing the ankle. And standing there beside one of her feet were two tiny human figures. In height, the length perhaps of her little foot. Men of human form; yet queerly grotesque; misshapen. One of them was in the act of reaching upward toward the tassel of her sandal cord where it dangled from her ankle; reaching as though to grasp it and draw himself upward. The other was watching; and both were grinning with gnomelike malevolence.

"Nor was this all, for behind the girl, a brief distance away in what appeared a woodland dell, was another figure--a man of aspect akin to the grinning gnomes, save that in comparative size even to the girl he was gigantic. Ten times her height, perhaps, he stood behind her towering into the trees about him. A man of short, squat legs, dark with matted hair; a garment like the gnomes', which might have been an animal skin; a heavy massive chest; black hair long to his neck. A face with clipped hair upon it. He was regarding the girl; a grin, but with a leer to it--horribly sinister. And in his great hands, brandished like a bludgeon, was an uprooted tree.

"Have I given you an idea of motion in the scene? There was none. The girl was obviously wholly unaware that she was not alone. She lay motionless. But the lack of movement in her--in them all--was more marked than that. The girl's lips were parted in a half-smile of revery; but the outlines of her bosom beneath the silver veil did not move. There was no movement of breath; no change of expression. The gnomes, the giant--not the minutest change could I see mirrored in their faces.

"Yet it was so lifelike, I could not doubt it was life--and that the motion was there though I could not see it. I watched all night, shaken with this fragment of drama, perhaps tragedy, which I was witnessing--but even the girl's eyelids did not tremble. Dawn came; the scene faded.

"For a month I did not even tell Father; and Frank, the vision of that girl has never left me. The menace--gruesome, sinister--upon her--and her beauty----"

"Haven't you ever seen her again?" I asked eagerly. "Was it life? How could it be life without motion?"

"Oh, he saw her again," Martt exclaimed. "I've seen her--we've all seen her."

"Tell him, Brett," Frannie urged.

"A month before I even told Father. During it, I searched for the scene unavailing, then Father and I searched together. It was a year, when almost from the same orbital position we came upon the scene again. A year--and now we saw a change. The figures all were there, frozen into immobility as before. But the gnome had caught the tassel, had drawn himself partly up to stand upon the girl's white ankle. The giant had come a trifle forward, and the upraised tree in his hands was partly lowered. The girl's attitude was unchanged, but there was now upon her face the vague dawn of startled knowledge, as though at that instant she was becoming aware of something pulling at her sandal cord, something touching her ankle--perhaps too, she was hearing a sound from the giant behind her. The startled knowledge which as yet had not had time fully to register upon her face."

My mind was whirling with a confusion of thoughts; the vague comprehension of what Brett meant was coming to me. I stammered, "Not yet had time--but Brett, you must have watched them all that night----"

"That night, Frank. And others--but there was no sign of movement. Another year--that was last year--we saw the girl partly aware of her danger. This year--a month ago--she was fully aware of it. Frightened--her eyes stricken wide with terror. But she had had no time as yet to move.

"Don't you understand, Frank? That drama is going on out there now. Like size of Matter and Space--and rate of Motion--there is no absolute Time. It is all comparative. To that realm out there of which we have been given a little vision, our tiny worlds here in the heavens are mere whirling electrons, like the electrons within one of our own atoms which to our consciousness of Time revolve many times a second.

"A year! A single revolution of our earth about its sun! To that girl out there, what we call a year is merely an electron in a fraction of a second revolving about its fellow. Even that is very slow--for she herself is wholly within the atom of a greater world outside her. A year as we call it--a second or less, to her. And though she is in full movement, how can we hope to see it by watching for a night? If a year were a second to her--an eight-hour vigil of ours would encompass less than a thousandth part of a second of her life!

"All comparative, Frank. There is nothing wonderful or really strange about it. In what we would experience to be a hundred years from now that girl will be fully faced with the menace of her assailants. A moment only, to her consciousness. It is that, Frank, we meant by the infinity of Time."

"Tell him what we're going to do," Martt insisted breathlessly.

It came from Brett in a burst almost incoherent. "I was not satisfied merely to see into this comparative infinity. Nor was Father. We have worked three feverish years, Frank, to climax all the labor of Father's which had gone before. And we have found a way--not merely to see, but to transport ourselves into these greater realms. A vehicle--I'll show you--explain it all. Its size can be changed--the state of the matter composing it is within our control. Its position in Space can be changed--simple enough, Frank, to enlarge upon the principles of our interplanetary vehicles. And--with one factor so interdependent upon the other--we have been able to control the rate of its Time-progress. It travels through Time as it does through Space."

His words were tumbling over each other. "You'll see it in a moment, Frank--test it--we have it here, ready yesterday. It sets us free, don't you understand? Free at last in Space and Time. And I'm going in it tonight--with Martt perhaps--we're going out to reach that girl upon an equality of Size and Time-progress. Going out to explore infinity!"

_CHAPTER 2_

"THIS COULD DESTROY THE UNIVERSE"

I had anticipated that they would show me a vehicle similar perhaps to the huge and elaborate space-flyers in the service of our Interplanetary Postal Division. But instead of taking me to the workshops where I had conceived it to be lying--serene, glistening with newness, intricate with what devices for its changing of size and Time-rate I could not imagine--instead of this they took me into the house. And there, in Dr. Gryce's quiet study with its sober, luxurious furnishings and his library of cylinders ranged in orderly array about the walls, I saw not one but four machines--mere models standing there on the polished table-top. Four of them identical--all of a milk-white metal.

But they were models complete in every detail. I stood beside one, regarding it with a breathless, absorbed interest as Dr. Gryce commented upon it. A cube of about the length of my forearm in its three equal dimensions, with a cone-shaped tower on top--a little tower not much longer than my longest finger. The cube itself had a rectangular doorway, and in each face two banks of windows. The door slid sidewise, the windows were of a transparent material, like glass. Midway about the cube ran a tiny balcony at the second-story level. It was wholly enclosed by the glasslike material. It extended around all four sides; small doors from it gave access to the cube's interior. The cone on top also had windows, and its entire apex was transparent.

I bent down and peered into the lower doorway. Tiny rooms were there. Bedrooms; a cookery--a house complete, save that it was wholly unfurnished. The largest room on the lower story--its floor had a circular transparent pane in it--was fitted with a seemingly intricate array of tiny mechanisms all of the same milk-white metal. A metallic table held most of them; and I could see wires fine as cobwebs connecting them. And in a corner of this room, a metallic spiral stairway leading to the upper story.

Dr. Gryce said, "That is the instrument room, complete. It contains every mechanism for the operation of the vehicle. We made it in this size--large enough to facilitate construction, but it is small enough to be economical of material. This substance--we have never named it--is of our own isolation. It is expensive. I'll explain it presently. . . . That room beside the instrument room is where we will put the usual everyday instruments necessary to the journey. Oxygen tanks--the apparatus for air purification and air renewal; telescopes, microscopes--my myrdoscope--all that sort of thing we can best obtain in its normal size. Those--and the furnishings--the provisions--all those in their normal size we will put into it later."

"You mean," I asked, "this is not a model? This is the actual vehicle?"

"Yes," he smiled.

"But there are four of them."

"We made six, Frank. It was advisable, and not unduly difficult to duplicate the parts in the making. The assembling took time----"

Brett said, "Father was insistent that we make every advance test possible. We have already used two of them. We are going to test the others today."

"Now," exclaimed Frannie. "Do it now--Frank will want to see it."

Dr. Gryce lifted one of the vehicles. In his hand it seemed light as alemite. He placed it on a taboret and we sat grouped around it.

"I shall send it into Time," he said quietly, "with its size unchanged, with no motion in Space, so that always in relation to us it will remain right here--I am going to send it back into other ages of Time." He turned to me earnestly. "We wanted you here, Frank, because you are so good a friend to me and my children. But for a selfish reason as well. When Brett goes out into Space and Time tonight, I want your keen eye to follow him. Your ability to record so accurately on the clocks what you see at any given instant----"

He was referring to my experience at the Table Mountain observatory--my first work when my training period was over. I had, indeed, a curiously keen vision for astronomical observation, and a quickness of finger upon the clock to record what I saw. In transit work I was extremely accurate; even now they were asking the Postal Division for my services at Table Mountain in the forthcoming transit of Venus.

Dr. Gryce was saying, "Your accuracy is phenomenal, Frank--your figures as you observe what little we see of this flight will help me--set my mind at rest that Brett is making no errors." He ended with a smile, "So you realize we have a selfish motive in wanting you."

"I'm very glad," I responded. He nodded and went back at once to what he had been saying previously. "I'm going to send this into Time. You must understand, Frank, that I can give you now only the fundamental concepts underlying this apparatus. We have so much to do today--so little time for theory. I need only tell you that it is readily demonstrable that Time is one of the inherent factors governing the _state of Matter_. This substance we have discovered--created, if you will--yields readily to a change of state. An electronic charge--a current akin to, but not identical with electricity--changes the state of this substance in several ways. A rapid duplication of the fundamental entities within its electrons--they are, as you perhaps know, mere _whirlpools of nothingness_--this rapid duplication adds size. The substance--with shape unaltered--grows larger. With such a size-change there comes a normal, correspondingly progressive change of Time-rate. We had to go beyond that, however, and secure an independent Time-rate, independently changeable, so that the vehicle might remain quiescent in size and still change its Time. In doing that, the _state of the matter_ as our senses perceive it is completely altered. As you know, no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. Which only means that with the Time-dimensions identical, different dimensions of Space are needed. With the Time-dimension differing--the state of Matter is different; two bodies thus can be together in the same space."

"What is a Time-dimension?" I asked. "I mean--how can you alter it?"

"I would say, Frank, that the Time-dimension of a material body is the _length_--or a measure of the length--of its fundamental vibration. Basically there is no real substance as we conceive it--for all Matter is mere vibration. Let us delve into substance. We find Matter consists of molecules vibrating in Space. Molecules are composed of atoms vibrating in Space. Within the atoms are electrons, revolving in Space. The electrons are without substance, merely vibrations electrically negative in character. The nucleus--once termed proton--is all then that we have left of substance. What is it? A mere vortex--an electrical vortex of nothingness!

"You see, Frank, there is no real substance existing. It is all vibration. Motion, in other words. Of what? That we do not know. Call it a motion of disembodied electrical energy. Perhaps it is something akin to that. But from it, our substantial, tangible, material universe is built. All dependent upon its vibratory rate. And the measure of that I would call the Time-dimension. When we alter that--when through the impulse of a current of vibration we attack that fundamental vortex to make it whirl at greater or lesser rate--then we, in effect, have changed the Time-dimension."

There was so much that seemed dimly close to my understanding, and yet eluded me!

"But," I said, "if you send that little cube back into Time, it will no longer exist at all. It will be in the past--non-existent now. Or suppose you send it into the future? It _will exist_ sometime--but now, it will be non-existent."

"Ah, that's where you're wrong," Brett exclaimed. "Don't you realize that you're making Time absolute? You're taking yourself and this present instant as fixed points of Space and Time--the standards beyond which nothing else can exist. That's fatuous. Frank, look here, it's simple enough once you grasp it. Time and Space are quite similar, except that you have never moved about in Time but you have in Space. Suppose you had not. Suppose--with your present power of thought--you were this house. You had always been here--always would be here. Suppose, too, that the world--the land and water--moved slowly past you, at an unalterable rate. That's what Time does to us. Then suppose I were to say to you--you as the house--'Let us go now to Great-London.' That would puzzle you. You would say, 'Great-London was here a year ago. But now it is gone--non-existent. It did exist--but now it doesn't.' Or you would say, 'The shore of the Great-Pacific Ocean will be here next year.' If I said, 'I'm going there now,' you would reply, 'But you'll be in the future. You'll be non-existent!' Making yourself the standard of everything. Don't you see how fatuous that is?"

I did not answer. It was so strange a mode of thought; it made me feel so insignificant, so enslaved by the fetters of my human senses. And these fetters Brett was very soon to cast off.