Part 3

"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?

II

I was sitting early one evening near the monight hour, alone with Frannie in the observation room. Dr. Gryce, in the room adjoining, had fallen asleep, worn by repressed anxiety and his now almost day and night vigil. We were talking in half-whispers; and abruptly Frannie voiced the fear that possessed us all.

"Oh, Frank, can't you see them? Please, you must! Oh, I'm afraid they're never coming back. Never--coming back."

It sounded so horrible. "Hush, Frannie. You mustn't say things like that." I put my arm around her, and suddenly like a child she flung herself to me; sobbed, and clung to me.

"Hush, Frannie. Don't cry--please don't cry. I'll look again. I might see them now. I'll try to."

I drew away from her; went back to my instrument. I had in mind to try the myrdoscope, but all our efforts with it during the two weeks past had been unavailing. It was a calm, clear evening. A broadly crescent moon was falling into the west. Mars was well above the eastern horizon; through the electro-telescope I looked that way. My circular field was empty. Frannie was checking her sobs, interested with hope renewed.

"Don't you see them, Frank?"

"No--not yet--_Yes_! I see them! Frannie, I see them!"

From visually above the red planet, out of nothingness a huge shape suddenly materialized. It had not been there an instant before; it seemed for the space of a thought, a transparent ghost of the vehicle; solidifying until even before I had told Frannie, I was aware that I saw it there. The vehicle unmistakable.

"They've come, Frannie! I see them! Call your father. Dr. Gryce! They've come! They're safe!"

How my heart leaped to be able to say it! Frannie was calling; and Dr. Gryce, no more than half awake, repeating, "They've come? They're in sight? They're safe?"

This gentle old man, how full of thankfulness his heart must have been! He came stumbling into the room. "Where are they, Frank? You can see them, lad?"

I could see them indeed--plainly, for abruptly I realized that they were no farther than just beyond the earth's atmosphere. And I could see also the conventional vane flying at horizontal above the vehicle's tower to denote that all was well within. They had come. They were safe.

They landed in the garden. Like a wafting feather the vehicle floated down under Brett's skilled guidance. It was of a size seemingly identical with the one it had upon departure, but evidence of its trip was everywhere visible. Its gleaming milk-white color was dulled. Its sides were pitted and scarred--the metal burned. A lower corner seemed fused into a shapeless lump.

The door slid open as we crowded forward. My heart was pounding. A sudden, irrelevant thought leaped to me--a thought, hope, that they might have brought back with them that strangely beautiful girl they had gone to rescue. A thought abruptly, fiercely poignant--yet with it a consciousness of its whimsicality that I--Frank Elgon--who loved Frannie Gryce, should be possessed of such incongruous desire.

The door was open. Brett and Martt--queerly garbed to seem almost strangers--were crowding there, with no one else behind them. But already I had forgotten the girl. Frannie's glad cries of welcome rang out; and Dr. Gryce's tremulous greeting; and I heard my own voice, strangely calm, "Well! Brett--Martt--you got back safely, didn't you? I'm so glad--we're all so glad!"

_CHAPTER 6_

THE FLIGHT INTO TIME, SIZE AND SPACE

They seemed not tired, but undoubtedly they were hungry, famished; and before they would say a word of those strange things we knew they had to tell, they made us feed them. "Regular food," as Martt laughingly called it. "By the code! We've eaten for months weird things supposed to be edible. My digestion is ruined."

Months! They had been gone two weeks and two days into a realm where those little sixteen days were no more than a tiny fraction of a second! Yet they spoke of months! It was very strange.

"Frannie! _Don't_ ask me that again." Martt affectionately tweaked her chin. "We found her, I tell you. Wait till we've had supper--you'll hear."

They ate with the relish of those long deprived of accustomed food; and as we sat with them, forbearing to ask the eager questions flooding us, again I had that impression of the strangeness which had come to them. It was not only their manner of dress, though that of itself was extraordinary. They wore shirts of a colored cloth with a high rolling collar in front, low and open in back. Short trousers that were queerly wide and flapping at the knee, stockings that seemed of a soft gray leather and long-pointed shoes of a material I could not name. Over the shirt a short jacket, wide-shouldered and with sleeves that puffed and flared; and a skirt to it at the waist which rolled upward. Their hats--which Frannie rescued from the vehicle--were solidly wooden of aspect, with low circular crowns and triangular stiff brims.

The garb seemed grotesque; yet they took it so as a matter of course when once we ceased our comments--and they were so easy in it, so unconscious of it--that abruptly I realized it was my own viewpoint that held the strangeness. Between them, also, there was a difference of aspect--a rationality to their characters. The colors of their garments materially differed. Brett's clothes were more sober--less vivid, less extreme. His shirt was a somber brown; Martt's was a glaring green. Martt's jacket had additional bangles fastened to its cloth, it rolled higher in the skirt; tassels depended from his elbows longer than those Brett wore. His jacket sleeves were fuller; his trousers flared more, and were a more brilliant hue. But I will say that when after a time I became in a measure accustomed to his looks, Martt was very handsome; and he carried himself with a sort of swinging, debonair grace and swagger wholly attractive.

They were strangers to us in their mode of dress; no one regarding them could have named a nation of earth or any of the habited planets from which they might have come. Yet the strangeness went deeper than their clothes. They seemed older. A vague aspect of command seemed upon them--especially did it envelop Brett, like an aura sensed but not seen. Martt's old jocularity was unchanged; no dignity, no reservation, no aloofness with us had been added to the new swagger. Yet beneath his laughter there seemed always a hidden solemnity. And then I saw it all--this subtle strangeness that clung to them--I saw it lurking in their eyes. Memories mirrored there; memories of things no man had seen and felt before. Eyes--and more especially Brett's eyes--which had seen, perhaps, too much.

II

It was Brett who began their narrative; began it with the slow, careful, precise phrasing of the scientist anxious to avoid error of memory; to be exact of every fact and detail. On his lap he held a book of notes, and another book of the many dial recordings. He consulted it.

"Our recorded time of starting was four minutes past midnight. Sixteen days ago, wasn't it, Father? Sixteen!"

He gave a queer laugh but did not comment upon his thoughts. "I had determined to start slowly. Martt would have rushed us, but I thought that caution was best until we were quite sure of the workings of these mechanisms new to us.

"I did not record our passing above the earth's atmosphere. But the vehicle was inordinately hot from the friction of our passage. Perhaps I took it too fast--at all events we did not bother with refrigeration since in Space we would so soon need the heaters. We sat sweltering at the main instrument table with the dials before us.

"I think, Father, that I followed your instructions carefully. The dials were all set and operating. The size-dials stood motionless at unit 1. Our relative Time-dials were motionless at the original unit of earth Time; and the earth dial-chronometers ticked off the passing of your seconds and minutes. On the Space-dials--when first I chanced to notice them--we had gone some 900 miles. Our velocity then had picked up to 1,500 miles an hour and was swiftly accelerating. The Time was 1 a.m.

"It is slow getting through the atmosphere, but now we were fairly on our way. As you suggested, Father, I was heading just a point off Mars where I could hold Jupiter and Saturn almost in a line ahead of us. They were all there visible through our floor window--we had turned over and were falling toward them. I was using a fraction only of the earth's repulsion, and holding steady with the selective attraction of Mars and the star-field behind it."

"We saw your aural ray," Martt put in. He was earnestly intent upon Brett's narrative. "We saw it--I saw it--through the spectrometer. The swing of it was apparent even at that near distance. And we saw the Martian Mail coming in--they landed in Eurasia that night, I suppose. Say, they move in a hurry, don't they? And stop in a hurry when they get down close."

Brett went on: "We were still within the lower cone of the earth's shadow. But presently we emerged and came into the sunlight. The brilliant blackness of Space; and the cold by now had penetrated so that very soon we were glad enough to use the heaters.

"You know the details of a Martian voyage, Father. And you, Frank? This was no different except that having no necessity of stopping I reached a greater velocity than they generally obtain. A forty-hour trip, isn't it, Frank?"

"There's nearly always one of the minimum-distance trips at about that," I answered. "But you had some sixty million miles for yours. That's a lot longer than a minimum distance."

He nodded. "Yes. We came abreast of Mars--I suppose about a million miles away. Our Space-dials showed about sixty-two million miles traveled. We had been gone from you thirty-nine hours. Our average velocity had been something over a million and a half miles an hour, and with steadily increasing acceleration had reached then nearly three million an hour.

"That was as quick a trip as you anticipated, Father? But even so, we found it irksome. We alternated at the instrument board. Martt prepared most of the meals--beyond that and sleeping there was little to do. Except to watch for asteroids; but the mails have reported the region through there remarkably free of them this season. We saw none inside the Martian orbit closer than a million miles, which to such a low velocity as ours held no danger."

Dr. Gryce asked, "The air purifiers, Brett? You had no trouble?"

"No. Or very little, except just at first with the chlorate of potassium. I was telling you about passing Mars. We saw it rising slowly past us--saw it through a side window. A huge crescent, the sunlight on half its disk, but even the unlighted portion was plainly outlined. Above us was the thin crescent earth, with the sun behind it. The tongues of flame in the sun's envelope were plainer than I had ever seen them. We were falling away from the earth and sun, into the inky blackness of Space with its blazing white stars.

"During all this first portion of the trip we were eager to get more quickly advanced. Beyond Neptune's orbit, with the Solar System once behind us, we would feel like explorers, even though Nogar--he holds the record, doesn't he?--went once 27,000 million miles out."

Dr. Gryce put in: "His record was 27,600 million miles from our sun. At nearly five million miles an hour, which was his maximum velocity obtainable, that trip for the full return passage consumed--I think the total time was 461 days."

Brett went on, "That was the record. But even to go a single light-year at that velocity would have taken Nogar around 84 years--just going out a little light-year of distance, to say nothing of getting back! And we had so many thousands of light-years to travel even to get beyond the stars. It seemed stupendous--impossible."