Chapter II

Martt said, "Can't we make the tests, Father? There is a frightful lot to do and it's nearly mid-morning already."

From the table Dr. Gryce took a small rod of the milk-white metal--a rod half a meter long and the diameter of my smallest finger. He knelt on the floor beside the taboret, peering into the tiny doorway of the mechanism he was about to send winging into the distant ages of our Past. Again we were breathless.

"More light, Frannie," he said. "I can not see inside here." Frannie illumined the tubes along the ceiling; the room was flooded with their soft, blue-white light.

"That's better." Rod in hand he turned momentarily to me. "I'm going to throw the Time-switch by pressing it with this rod," he explained. "Within the vehicle--the confined space there--the current is equally felt." He smiled gravely. "Without the rod I should lose a finger to the Past----"

Carefully he inserted the rod into the doorway. A moment of fumbling, then I heard a click. The little milk-white model seemed to tremble. It glowed; from it there came a soft, infinitely small humming sound. It glowed, melted into translucency--transparency. For an instant I had a vague sense that a spectral wraith of it was still before me. Then with a blink of my eyelids I realized that it was gone. The taboret was empty. Beside it, Dr. Gryce knelt with the rod melted off midway of its length in his hand.

I breathed again. Brett said softly, "It is gone, Frank. Gone into the Past, relative to our consciousness of Time. Gone from our senses--yet it is here--occupying the same Space it did before--but with a different Time."

He passed his hand through the apparent vacancy above the taboret. To me then came a realization of how crowded all Space must be! Of what a tiny fraction of things existent--of events occurring--are we conscious! That Space over the taboret--empty to me. . . . yet it held for a mind omniscient an infinity of things strewn through the ages of the Past and Future. What multiplicity of events--unseen by me--Time was holding separate in that crowded Space above the taboret!

Dr. Gryce was saying, "Let us test one now by sending it into smallness--come here, Frank."

He had risen to stand by the table, with another of the models before him. "This bit of stone," he said. "Let us send it into that."

He laid a flat piece of black-gray, smoothly polished stone on the table near the model. And with another rod he reached into the doorway. Again I heard a click. He withdrew the rod. "You see, Frank."

I saw that the rod was slightly compressed along the length he had inserted. The model was already dwindling. Soundlessly, untremblingly--it was contracting, becoming smaller, with shape and aspect otherwise unchanged. Soon it was the size of my fist. Dr. Gryce picked it up, rested it upon his opened hand. But in a moment it was no more than a tiny cube rocking in the movement of his palm. He gripped it gingerly with thumb and forefinger and set it on the polished black slab of stone. Its milk-white color there showed it clearly. But it was very small--smaller than the thumb-nail of my little finger. The cone-shaped tower was a needle-point.

A breathless moment passed. It was now no more than a white speck upon the black stone surface.

Brett said, "Try the microscope, Frank. You watch it."

I put the low-powered instrument over it; Brett adjusted the light. The stone was smoothly polished. But now, under the glass, upon a shaggy mass of uneven rock surface I saw the vehicle visually as large as it had been originally. But it was dwindling progressively faster. Soon it lay tilted sidewise upon a slope of the rock; smaller--a tiny speck clinging there.

"Can you still see it?" Brett murmured.

"Yes--no--now it is gone." The rock seemed empty. Somewhere down in there the little mechanism lay dwindling. Forever it would grow smaller. Dwindling into an infinity of smallness; but always to be with things of its size--and things yet smaller. . . .

As I turned from the glass, I became aware that Martt and Frannie were not in the room. Dr. Gryce and Brett, absorbed in the test, quite evidently had not noticed them leave. There had been two other models on the table--there was now but one.

Then from the garden outside the house a cry reached us. A shout--a cry of fear--terror. Martt's voice.

"Father! Brett! Help us! Help! Quick!"

* * * * *

We rushed from the room.

Crowning wonder, yet horrible! A surge of fear swept me. In the garden quite near the house stood the other model. Small no longer. It had grown--_was growing_--until already it was as large as the house itself. Around it the flowers, shrubs, even a tree had been pushed and trampled by its expanding bulk. It stood gleaming white in the sunlight, motionless save for that steady, increasingly rapid growth. Its windows and doors loomed large dark rectangles; its balcony was broad as a corridor; its cone tower was already reared higher than the nearest trees.

"Father! Help!"

At the doorway of the vehicle, standing just outside it, were the terror-stricken Martt and Frannie. They were holding the end of a long metallic pole which projected into the doorway. Struggling with its weight, striving to throw the switch inside.

We reached them. The expanding bulk of the gleaming side of the vehicle had pushed them back into a thicket of shrubbery. Near them a tree, uprooted as though it were a straw sticking upright in sand, was pushed aside and fell with a crash.

Martt and Frannie were livid with terror; breathless, almost exhausted with their futile efforts.

Martt panted, "We can't--lift the pole! It's--too heavy--too large inside."

Within the huge doorway, by the sunlight streaming through the windows, I could see the interior half of the pole, bloated by growth, huge, heavy.

Brett shoved Frannie away. "Frank! Here--take hold with us."

Dr. Gryce was with us. Together we four men got the interior end of the pole upon the table inside. A tremendous switch lever was there. But the pole slipped, rolled down. I expected it to break at the doorway point where it was so small outside, but it did not. The expanding doorway had pushed us farther back. Another tree on the other side fell. Above us the vehicle's tower loomed like a cathedral spire. Tremendous now, the vehicle had grown until it was almost touching the house. A fence had been trampled, had vanished beneath its giant bulk.

And the growth was increasingly rapid. If we could not check it . . . If it got wholly beyond control--this monster, growing . . . forever growing, to a size infinitely large--larger than our earth itself. . . .

I must have been standing stupidly confused. I heard Dr. Gryce imploring, "Take hold of it, Frank! We must lift it. We must--our last chance----"

But Brett pushed us away. "I'm going inside. I can move the switch--let go of me, Father! That switch--it isn't too big yet--but it will be in a minute. Let go of me!"

"No! No, Brett! The shock as you went in--you couldn't take it so suddenly. It might hurt you--kill you. And the switch is too big for your strength."

It was out of control--this monster, growing, inexorably growing--it was pushing at the house--a great white giant pushing gently but with an irresistible power at the little toy house beside it. I could see the house shifting on its foundations; a corner of it tilted downward.

"Brett! Father! Try it now. One last try." Martt and Frannie had the pole again in position. With a last despairing effort we raised it; slid it up over the giant table-edge; caught the wide flaring side of the giant switch. Pushing--despairingly; five of us, pigmies struggling there at that giant threshold. The switch moved. Our pole held its place; the switch moved farther, clicked with a tremendous snap that reverberated about us. The growth of the monster was checked. It stood there serene, triumphant, with the little house, tilted, but still standing bravely beside it.

White, shaken, we ceased our efforts. Frannie gasped, "We--we only wanted to make it a normal size--so you could load it up with the furniture and things. But it--it got away from us."

Dr. Gryce said, "It is a lesson--perhaps a lesson which we needed forced upon us." He gestured to the great quiescent white building which had spread itself over most of the devastated garden. "A lesson," he repeated. "We must guard this power carefully. In unskilled or unscrupulous hands it is a power for evil almost unthinkable. This monster here--if it had gotten beyond us--if we had lost its control--this could destroy the Universe!"

_CHAPTER 3_

EXPLORERS INTO INFINITY

"You think we've got everything in it?" Frannie asked anxiously.

We had gotten the vehicle back to a size normal to our own stature; and all day had been working to equip it. The instrument room--its Space and Time and size mechanisms were complete. I had learned now that it was to be transported through Space by very similar principles to those commonly in use--a controlled attraction or repulsion of the faces of its cube for the heavenly body nearest to it; in effect, an intensification--a neutralization--or reversal at will of the electronic force which flows between and mutually attracts all material bodies; the force which once--in centuries past--was called gravitation. It needed no word of explanation. Its velocity and distance dials, its direction indicators, were familiar, though rather more intricate than those I had seen in the Interplanetary Service. Beyond that, there was a bank of dials upon which a changing size was recorded--with the vehicle's present starting dimensions to be the standard unit. And other dials for its Time-change. Of these there were two distinct sets. One, a record of the normal Time-change, inevitable to a change of size; another, a comparison of that Time-distance with the normal Time-progress of the earth, so that the Time-position of the vehicle into the earth's Past or Future could be seen.

In a subsidiary instrument-room was a variety of modern astronomical apparatus; the myrdoscope, and a receiver for an aural ray which, as a guide to Brett, Dr. Gryce was to send from earth. Of this, in more detail, they later explained.

In a smaller room were the apparatus for air renewal, the making of various necessary gases, water and synthetic foods; a store-room of provisions; rooms furnished comfortably so that the vehicle was complete in its living quarters. A thousand details, until at the last I felt as Frannie did--wondering how we could have failed to overlook a score of things we had intended to do.

It was nightfall when we finished; and all that evening we spent checking up the equipment. Dr. Gryce's home had not been seriously damaged by the morning's mishap; and as midnight approached we gathered in the little observation and instrument room he had built in its upper story. Brett and Martt, it had been decided, were to make the journey; we others were to watch and wait. It seemed the more difficult role. All that evening Dr. Gryce had been increasingly silent, careworn of manner and aspect. And though Brett was excited in his mature, repressed fashion--and Martt frankly exuberant--I saw that little Frannie was solemn, perturbed as her father.

It was a soft, brilliant, cloudless night, with no moon to pale the gleaming stars. And at last every detail was settled, and the midnight hour we had set for departure was at hand. We went forth with them to the waiting vehicle. There was nothing more to say. They stood--Brett and Martt--in the opened doorway as we gathered about them.

"Well--good-bye, Father--good-bye, Frannie dear." Brett held her close; then released her, pushed her away. "Good-bye, Frank." His hand-clasp was warm and steady.

Martt was jocular, but now at the last I could hear a tremble to his voice. "When we get to that girl out there--well, I'm going to tell her how interested you all are in her." His laugh was high-pitched. "That is, if we can handle that giant."

"Good-bye, Brett. Good-bye, Martt."

Our words were so futile, so inadequate to the surge of feeling within us! The door slid closed upon them. The vehicle, not to change size until it was far into the realms of outer interstellar Space, beyond our crowding little planets--lifted gently, soared upward, slid away from us, a glistening white shape up there in the quiet starlight.

Gravely, silently, with what sinking of heart I could only imagine, Dr. Gryce stood regarding it. Beside me Frannie was crying softly.

Explorers into infinity! And they were gone, to encounter--what?

_CHAPTER 4_

THE WATCHERS

We spent the rest of that night in the little observation room on the upper story of Dr. Gryce's home; with him and Frannie beside me I sat watching the vehicle's flight through the electro-telescope. It was not a high-powered instrument, but it served. I could see the vehicle plainly as it passed through our atmosphere and out into Space. A tiny blob with darker rectangles of windows.

Dr. Gryce sat with instruments, charts and his computations before him. Occasionally he would ask me for the vehicle's position; and I would give him the points and clock the time with all the accuracy of which I was capable. He seemed solemn, perturbed no longer; the scientist in him was all-absorbing. He said once with satisfaction, "Brett is competent--the boy hasn't varied a hair from my directions."

I knew that he and Brett had picked up the image of the girl and her assailants within a month past; and that Brett had accurate calculations which he could follow until able to capture the image on his own instruments.

"How long will it take them to get there?" I asked. "When will they be back? You said within a few days. How long?" Dr. Gryce looked up from his work with a faint smile. "There's no answer to that, Frank. Without a change of their time it might take them to reach that realm out there a thousand years or a million years--the vehicle's maximum velocity we do not know--that they are to find out."

"A million years! And another million to come back!"

His smile broadened. "As we measure Time, yes. But they will change their Time-rate; the trip may seem to them only a few days."

"But," I persisted, "two million years of our Time! And we can not change our Time."

"No, Frank. But you speak thoughtlessly. Brett can return to any point in our Time he wishes. Not with exactitude--but, we hope, within a few days. They will return here--within that Time we have agreed."

Frannie's face was very solemn though she said nothing; and I knew then that she was wondering if her brothers would be able to keep their promise.

Dr. Gryce rose from his chair. "I must adjust the aural ray--Brett may need it."

He had already explained this ray. A device similar to the familiar aurometer by which the aural power of the earth is measured. He had perfected an instrument for projecting into Space the invisible aura of the earth--projecting it in a tiny, very intense beam. An instrument for visualizing its characteristic bands was in the vehicle. They hoped that the ray might reach out into distant, interstellar Space; a flash of it crossing the sky as our earth rotated. And, coming back, Brett would see it, recognize it. A guide, as he came back from beyond all the universes strewn there throughout the magnitude of Space. If it could reach out there--if he saw it. My heart sank at the thoughts, doubts, which rushed upon me.

Dr. Gryce set his aural projector, with its ray, invisible to the naked eye, flashing after the vehicle. Silently he returned to his seat.

"Can you see them? You can still see them, Frank?" Frannie turned to me with anxious face.

I could still see the vehicle. But faintly, for faster than any mail flyer it was winging its way outward. Mars--approaching its closest point to the earth now to bring a deluge of the Martian Mails--red Mars at midnight had been above us. The vehicle had gone that way; and now, visually beside the planet, they were sinking together in the western sky. The stars were paling with the coming dawn. The east flushed with it, and presently I could see the vehicle no longer.

And as I turned from my instrument, I heard Dr. Gryce. "Why Frannie, girl! You're worn out! Come, it's dawn--they've vanished."

Little Frannie had fallen asleep.

_CHAPTER 5_

THE RETURN

We did not sight the vehicle the next night; it had seemingly passed beyond range of my instrument. With the myrdoscope we hoped to catch it, but could not. The night following was overcast with clouds. But we remained awake; Dr. Gryce seemed to feel that his sons might be returning. It was pathetic to me, observing him quietly slipping away from us at intervals to wander among the wreckage of his garden, gazing anxiously upward.

A week and still they had not come. What Dr. Gryce said to my Director I do not know; but he told me the Director was satisfied to have me remain away until my present business was finished. I had determined as much for myself. Not all the Directors in the Service could have taken me away from here, with Brett and Martt unheard from.

Like a beacon day and night we made sure that our aural ray was flashing its beam. But would Brett see it?

Another week. Still no sign. Doubts, fears, terrors assailed us. Were we watching, waiting futilely for what would never come? The thought was in my mind--and I knew it was in the minds of Dr. Gryce and Frannie--but never once did we voice it. Had Brett and Martt, perhaps, returned to our Past? With mechanism impaired, had they landed here in what we now called the Past--landed to find a wilderness of roaming savages? Or to find this little Space we now called a house and garden, a barren icy waste with men no more than beasts upon it? Or landed here in our Future? Ourselves dead, gone and forgotten? A great city here on this spot, perchance, with strange people and strange ways and nothing remaining of the loved ones they sought? Or were they lost and wandering in Space? Out there among myriad starry Universes hopeless to find our infinitesimal Solar System? Or lost perhaps in Time, wandering through the eons searching for the little centuries, years, days that identified their goal?

Or, again, perhaps they had safely reached that outer realm? Perhaps, once there, something had happened to prevent their return? In what we now called the Present, perhaps they were out there, transfixed, just as to our vision that strange girl and her strange assailants were transfixed--stricken of motion, with a passing of Time to us insensible. Transfixed out there now, to take no more than a few breaths, to move a hand, no more, during all the span of our own tiny lives?