Part 2

"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.

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.

[Illustration: "The vehicle was out of control, pushing at the house like a great white giant."]