Chapter THREE: The Other World

Crandall awoke to the faint sounds of farm life and spent a few sleepy moments wondering where he was. The low of a cow, the creak of a windmill, and the bustle of activity in another part of the house; the sigh of a free wind and the whisper of leaves--none of these were indigenous to his normal habitat and it annoyed him until the sleep left him and he recalled.

Days of hard work and too little sleep, the relaxation of the farm for an evening. Jane. Jane!

Crandall swore mildly. He became introspective and carefully analyzed his feelings, even though he knew that he was hopelessly incapable of coming to an honest solution about himself. His glands and his intellect were at wide variance. He had no right to ask for nor could he offer love.

Dave growled at himself and climbed out of bed. A cool shower helped; he was glad that the Nolan farm was not of the older variety. Here at least was farm life with almost every comfort of urban living. He dressed and then went down the stairs slowly.

"Sleepyhead," Jane called as she saw him. "It's nearly nine o'clock."

"Middle of the night," he said.

"Dad and Mom have been up for hours."

"And you?"

"Positively minutes." Jane came to him, face upraised. He kissed her and momentarily forgot his troubles.

But it all ended too soon. Breakfast was leisurely, and then they were off, back to Merion.

They arrived at the laboratory in an hour, and then the bustle of activity herded Dave's introspective feelings out of his mind.

He discovered that the night of relaxation had sharpened his mind. He ran through the program once more in the remote lab, and then they announced that he was ready to try the real thing.

Dave went to the jeep. Jane followed.

"Dave--be careful."

"As possible," he agreed. He kissed her and then started off towards the remote lab that still held the crystal clamped in the electrodes.

_They_ wanted physicists, huh? He'd show them, whoever they were. He'd fox them. The trick was completely incomprehensible, but however they did it, it was as neat a program of treachery as had been invented in all history. In an earlier day the enemy went for the leaders, the generals and the admirals and the kings and emperors. Now it was the engineers and physicists, for it was science that carried victory. The most brilliant military strategist was a mere cork bobbing on the rim of a whirlpool if he were not equipped with the latest and best that could come from applied physics.

But Dave was not a physicist. He was just a scribbler of articles, an occasional writer of fiction. So Dave was not the man _they_ wanted. Let them sit and chew their fingernails while he, a zero quantity as far as they were concerned, toyed with the crystal. It wouldn't be practical to waste the crystal on him, any more than it was practical to hurl a can of SPAM[1] at a convoy escort.

[Footnote 1: For Self Propelled Atomic Missile: a humorous contraction used in a novel, "Murder of the U.S.A.," by Will F. Jenkins, shortly after World War II. When self-propelled guided missiles came into being, General Lansdowne conferred Jenkins' appellation upon them and the name has remained.--G.O.S.]

Dave arrived at the remote lab and went to work. They checked him through the video and the sound channel both ways, and then Dave turned toward the crystal.

"The power," he said, "is being built up, as you can hear in the background, the generators are groaning a bit under the initial heavy load. The--ah--gaussmeter is rising up the scale. It occurs to me that the boys on the other side of this might well be chewing their fingernails at the moment. If I've got this thing figured right, _they_ can see into this lab and know me and who I am--and possibly what I am doing. Maybe they've even figured out the why of it.

"Now, the next item is something I've been keeping quiet about. I doubt that _they_ can read minds, but I'm pretty sure they can hear us and watch us. So I've kept quiet until now.

"As Dr. Thomas Meteridge can tell you, I've been given about six months to live. So I have nothing to lose, especially if I can prove a point. I've claimed stoutly that _they_ aren't interested in anything but physicists, and that a tyro would be safe out here. But it's still possible that I was wrong.

"As you'll note, I've already got farther than either Claverly or Phelps. I think that if I kept my mouth shut now, I'd be allowed to finish the job. But--I think I have a clue to the identity of the enemy, and the method they're using to destroy our top scientific talent!"

He paused. "Of course, I could be bluffing. But I don't think _they_ can afford to take that chance. So, in a minute, when I start to tell you what I think I know, they'll have to decide...."

"Dave," cried Jane, "what chance have you got?"

"A fair chance," he said. "We've got them spread nicely across the horns of a dilemma. If _they_ do grab me, it will prove that there's an enemy alien at work. If they don't grab me, I'll solve their secret--"

The crystal flashed pearly-white. Again it paralyzed the orthicon and crackled in the loudspeaker. It blinded Dave momentarily, but he shouted, "I'm still here!"

He heard a cry from the far end of the sound system. It faded rapidly.

* * * * *

As his eyesight returned, Dave looked around curiously. The laboratory was still around him, but it had the same semi-ghostly appearance that Claverly and Phelps had had. Of the images of the two physicists Dave could see nothing. They had been there, faintly visible, when he had gone in. Now they were gone. Dave looked at the workbench. He passed a hand through it. He stamped on the floor and found that he was stamping _through_ the floor; he was actually standing on a semi-smooth surface a few inches below it.

"Damn!" he swore. He looked around. The concrete walls of the building were heavy and thick; he could not see clearly through them. He walked forward, hands outstretched, and saw his hands enter the wall. He walked through the wall, and felt a slight resistance, as though he were walking through water. He burst through the far side and the released pressure pitched him headlong.

Once outside, Dave looked around. In the ghostly distance he could see the main laboratory building and the jeep bearing Jane, DeLieb, and Howes. They came to the building and Dave ran to meet them.

"I'm here," he called. He screamed it. He yelled at the top of his voice. Jane walked through him. Her face was broken, tears filled her eyes, and Dave tried desperately to get her attention. But she walked through him and went on. They went in the door; Dave walked back through the phantom wall and met them inside.

"Dave!" cried Jane. She ran across the room and reached--then recoiled, her face twisted in horror.

"Like Claverly, like Phelps," she whispered.

"Like hell!" yelled Dave. "Dammitall, I'm here!"

"Gone!" said Jane.

"I'm not gone!" snapped Dave. But a still voice inside him said that he was. He looked carefully at the place Jane watched with horror-filled eyes. He could see nothing. Then he went to Jane and peered into her eyes. The pupils were clear. Dave snorted. If he could not see the image of himself that Jane saw, there was no reason why he could see a possible reflection of that image in her pupils.

"So he proved it," said DeLieb.

"And so we continue, knowing that something or someone is maliciously attacking us," said Howes.

"It's mine," said Jane in a flat voice.

"No--" said DeLieb.

"I want to follow him," she said.

"Don't be a fool!" yelled Dave.

He ran to the crystal and slapped at it. It hurt. With a glad cry, Dave pried at it with his fingers. The clamping electrodes held it firm--and he could not touch them, for they were as thin and tenuous as the concrete wall through which he had walked. Only the crystal was solid both _there_ and _here_.

Dave smiled sourly. If he was dead, then this was a fine psychological hell. Here he was watching friends and a loved one marching into deadly danger, listening to their grief and their dangerous plans, while he was completely helpless to guide them.

He felt the crystal move slightly under his straining fingers. Wrapping a handkerchief about his fist, Dave punched at the crystal. It gave--or on the other side, the clamping electrodes gave. At any rate, it was loose.

He hit it again and jarred it.

"The crystal!" cried Jane. "It's moving!"

"Blow-up!" yelled DeLieb.

But this time there was no panic. Howes cut the energizing power with a flick of his hands across the toggle switches. DeLieb clamped down on the electrodes with a hand and spun the wingnuts that held it with the other. Jane Nolan grabbed at the crystal as it came free and turned to the pneumatic delivery tube.

But Dave reached out a hand and snatched it from her.

Jane cried in pain and fear, and watched the crystal make three long swoops towards the concrete wall--Dave had grabbed it and started to run outside. The crystal was wrenched from his fingers as he went through the wall. It fell to the floor, and all three physicists swooped down upon it.

Jane came up with it and popped it into the pneumatic tube.

It rattled thrice and was gone, racing down the tube end over end, visible to Dave as it raced out of reach.

"It wants physicists," breathed DeLieb.

"But it's gone now."

"And so is Dave," cried Jane.

"Dammit," snapped Dave. Then he gave up, because he knew the utter futility of trying to make them hear him.

But there was a way!

The crystal extended through both worlds. All Dave had to do was to get the crystal and use it as a stylus against some surface in the other world.

He turned to follow the pneumatic tube towards the place where the crystal had gone. He was not more than a hundred yards down the length of the tube when the sky blinded him from a couple of miles away, and then the air roared, and then when vision returned he could see a pillar of white smoke billowing skyward. _They_ had destroyed the crystal!

* * * * *

Dave stopped to think.

Clearly, the exploding crystal was as dangerous on this side as it was on the other. That meant that no one could stand close by and watch the thing to be sure of which physicists they got--unless they used some sort of television hookup.

So Dave retraced his steps to the laboratory and inspected it. He saw nothing, and so began to feel his way through the walls of the building. He became engrossed in this job; it was both interesting and a bit terrifying to go walking through walls and feeling along the insides of beams and rafters. The building was a sort of thick phantom. Not only were the walls transparent, but the pipe lines, electrical wiring, nails, and other normally hidden bits of construction were visible within them. And walking along the length of a wall with a shoulder on either side, one in one room and one in the other, was disconcerting as well as amusing.

The heavy concrete-block walls, set up for radiation barriers, were wider than Crandall's shoulder-spread, and he could walk through their length completely enclosed in the hard concrete. Here it was eerie, too, for encased in the concrete were electrical wires and pipes, to Dave no heavier than the concrete through which he walked, but none the less clearly visible.

So Dave inspected the remote lab, walking down the walls and through the pipes and wires that stretched through the house like a spider's web, and he saw no evidence of espionage--

--until he caught his throat under a wire that should have been as tenuous as the others, but which almost throttled him.

Dave bounded back, clutching at his throat and swearing soundly.

Then he realized!

And forgetting his throat, Dave followed the wire to one of the remote video and audio sets. He pulled it aside--and it split into two complete sets! There were two television cameras, identical in every way, one in Dave's world, one in the everyday world, placed in perfect register!

His proof!

His friends had gone; obviously back to their laboratory to prepare another crystal. Here he could get one: their next one. Then he could communicate with them and start planning a counter-offensive.

Dave looked across the plain towards the main laboratory building, and shrugged. If he had a crystal now, all he could do would be to let them know he was alive and on the job, but had no information. On the other hand, he had fouled up the television camera in the remote lab, and it seemed likely that there would be a repairman coming along to see what was wrong.

Just where Claverly and Phelps were in this mess Dave didn't know. But he assumed that soon after their projection into this cockeyed half-world, the enemy had come along to collect them both.

Dave blinked at a sudden fantastic thought: would the flashing of a crystal send him back to his own world, or toss him along into another one?

An interesting thought--to be pursued later. Right this moment the thing to do was to lie doggo until the enemy arrived to take Dave in tow. This time, instead of a baffled scientist, they were attempting to catch a gent who was more interested in being alive than in figuring out where he was.

Had Dave been a pure scientist, he would have been amazed and baffled by this half-world. The whys and wherefores would have bothered him to the exclusion of other considerations, and he would have been standing there trying to figure it all out when the enemy came along to collect him. Instead, Dave was still alive, or felt that he was, and that was enough for him. Someone else could figure out how and why; his was the line of action; so long as he was able, he was going to continue to live and fight.

So when the helicopter dropped down out of the sky near the remote laboratory and disgorged a man carrying a rifle, Dave, the quarry, was sprawled behind a slight ridge in the half-world's terrain, watching through a cleft in the stone outcrop.