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Tomkins and MacDowell were napping quietly. The second mate, a guy |
named Todd, was making motions at guiding the ship's flight through |
nothing, and also making a mild play for Helen MacDowell. And not |
getting very far with either job. |
Biggs and Cleaver had finished inspecting the instrument panels, |
and were in earnest confab by the plot charts. Hank seemed to be |
summarizing their decisions. |
" your new gadget was supposed to eliminate every speck of energy |
waste, huh?" |
"That's right. And thus conserve fuel, at the same time giving |
tremendous speed," Biggs nodded. |
"An' when you plugged the switch, it gave one whoop an' holler, the |
Saturn went like a bat out o' hell for a few seconds " |
" and then," finished Biggs, "we found ourselves here. That's the |
story, Hank. The whole story, so help me. But if, from those few facts |
and what I've shown you, you can explain in what part of the universe |
we are, you're an even greater genius than history says you were I |
mean, are." |
Hank cocked a quizzical eye. "That's funny, ain't it?" he mused. "I |
was, but I still am. Time's tricky, Lanse. But, listen, you made one |
mistake." |
"Yes?" |
"In sayin' 'what part o' the universe.' Way I see it that ain't the |
explanation a-tall. Way I see it, there's two kinds o' universes. The |
is an' the ain't. An' we're in the other one." |
"I I beg your pardon?" faltered Biggs. |
"Put it this way. You draw a graph, an' you cross two lines. The block |
at the upper right intersection o' them two lines is the is universe. |
The one we live in. Ain't that right?" |
Biggs nodded. "That's a simple way of graphing existence, yes. The |
horizontal line would represent existence in space, the vertical line |
existence in time. At any given moment, a man's position in space and |
time is coördinated in the positive sector. But " |
He stopped abruptly, looking at Hank with startled eyes. |
"But you don't mean, Hank, we're in the bottom sector of the graph!" |
Hank sighed. "'Fraid that's 'zackly what I do mean, Lanse. It's no |
wonder nuthin' looked natcheral to you. We done bust plumb out o' space |
an' time as we ordinarily know it. We're in the imaginary sector o' |
space-time! The coördinate of where we are now ain't even positive |
numbers. They're all based on a negative factor the square root o' |
minus one!" |
CHAPTER IV |
Danger Ahead |
I looked at Bert Donovan and he looked at me. Judging by the faces of |
our two screwball intellectuals, there was something smelly on the |
Saturn. But it was all a deep and dark mystery to me. |
I said, "Hank, for old times' sake, would you brush that off again |
lightly for me? In words of one syllable, what has the little letter |
i got to do with space flight, gray skies and time-travel?" |
But Hank ignored me. On the right track at last, he was developing his |
arguments. |
"Reckon you know more 'bout energy-mass relationships than I do, |
Lanse. 'Spect you'll remember, then, the transformations cooked up by |
a guy from our time, feller by the name o' Lorentz? Him an' a couple |
other guys named Einstein an' Planck fiddled around with hyper-spatial |
mechanics an' discovered some interestin' things. Includin' the fact |
that mass is altered when it travels at high velocities. |
"Whut I figger musta happened is this. The gadget you invented worked |
even better'n you expected. It worked so durn well that it give the |
Saturn one whale of a kick in the pants. Made it accelerate at a |
speed greater than that of light! |
"So then what? Why, then the plus universe warn't big enough to |
hold the Saturn any more! That wild minute or two you talked about |
was when you exceeded the limitin' velocity. An' then here you was in |
the minus universe! Which is, so to speak, the negative matrix of the |
normal plus universe we ordinarily live in." |
It didn't make sense to me, but apparently it did to Lieutenant Biggs. |
He passed a damp palm across a sweating forehead. |
"You're right, Cleaver! You must be right, because your argument |
agrees with all the known theories and observed facts. The incredible |
readings on our instruments, the weird surroundings in which we find |
ourselves " He stared at my friend sombrely. "But what are we going |
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