Fox B. Holden

“ Hints that Lin Griffin gave me before her last trip beyond the Barrier—they are all I have to explain why the solar system is as you see it now; altered, changed, alive.
"Unless, gentlemen, you would accept a better answer; one that Lin Griffin herself might have given you. She would tell you that there is more to the Universe—the macrocosmo and the microcosmo as well—than Man has yet measured. To speak of Universe means, gentlemen, to speak not only of its known contents, but of its unknown as well, for it is eternally the container of both. ”

“ Cragin said.
"It is no answer at all!" the girl said. She took a step forward toward the intruder, and there was high color in her cheeks. Only his cloak moved. "Perhaps you control your own destinies, if that is what you care to think. But not ours! For the use of your machinery, we will gladly repay you, in any medium that you desire that we are capable of supplying. But our role isn't that of intruder or wrong doer; it is simply one of desperation. With your machines, our planet, its life, might be saved. If you know of life, you know of the high value men put upon it. ”

“ For everything."
"For the entire planet."
"For the entire solar system."
"Sure, but not today."
"Not only for today, but for all time. Gravity, warp, everything. If you don't believe me, try explaining the difference between Space as it exists inside and outside the Barrier sometime. Those—" she gestured toward the upper rows of machines, "control the power. When you know how to manipulate them, you can move any body within the system at will—in any direction, at any speed. The sun itself, if you want to." ”

“ And it was a planet, Cragin learned, a planet little larger than Earth, honeycombed with subterranean tubes and chambers as had been the control point; a labyrinth which contained a civilization of little more than twenty million members; a headquarters for those who ran and owned the universe.
They were escorted to the testing place by two creatures of the fourth grade; bipeds, shorter than men, with hunched backs and splayed tentacles for arms and hands. Cragin noted that they carried armament of a sort; simple tube-like objects which were aimed at him while he was relieved of his Krells. ”

“ Lin Griffin said. "Of course they live in the center of a star! They rule all, don't they? They're the great masters of all creation, aren't they? Certainly you don't think your great masters would live on anything so simple as a mere planet! ”

“ So when next you seek to plumb the Universe, gentlemen, and to equate yet one more of its myriad unknown quantities, think again of the half-gods, such as the Owners—such as we ourselves strove so mightily to be—who would equate them all. For it is always inevitable, gentlemen that soon or late, though the Universe remains, the half-gods go. ”

“ Earth's eyes still blinked in the bright sunlight in which they suddenly gloried again; Earth's throats, no longer fevered and parched, still wondered at the cool feel of fresh water, which had not trickled down them for more than five centuries. Earth's minds were still ignorant of the answer; they knew only that this was Life, although they had failed by themselves in cheating Death, and had already calculated the dimensions for their graves. ”

“ For the second time in his life since he had met Lin Griffin, he wondered what, if something there was, might lie beyond logic.
The simplified control panel resembled something that might have been manufactured in Earth factories half a century before. It had been obviously designed for the capabilities of the servant-pilot to whom it was assigned. If only she had the guts—
Cragin blasted off, and twisted the speed-control full on. ”

“ He tried to keep his voice flat and machine-like so he wouldn't give himself away, but he sounded like an hysterical schoolgirl compared to the voice that answered him. It was that of a woman; a woman who might have died and shriveled in the deserts a hundred years ago.
"Follow me, Patrolman, if you have the courage. Turn back if you'd rather be safe to choke your life away on the sterile place you call home. There's a lot of room beyond the Barrier, but little for men who worship merely their own perfection and stay blind to problems which they cannot solve. ”

“ Logically, no human woman could have endured what Lin Griffin endured, nor conceived the strategy with which the machine-planet was erased from existence. According to the logic of the last five centuries of human culture, what Lin Griffin did, how she thought, were both impossibilities. ”

“ As servants of the twelfth, and lowest, rank, your duty will be the mining of unconsumed zronon, employed by the Owners to maintain their home and their glorious gateway on an equal level of brilliance to that of the stars themselves. Death awaits that servant who lags in his output. Your destination will be the eighth mining planet, nearest the edge of the Trespass Limit. ”

“ Grimes came up with a similar plot-check, described on a regulation ship's form. The senior Patrol officer compared the two, the flight plan and the running trajectory laid out by Kramer, and Cragin's teeth glinted through his lips as they went slack in amazement.
"God, sir, that's impossible. It ends at the square of light-speed!"
"Fowler Griffin is—was—one of Earth's topmost scientists. His work is beyond question, Mister Cragin. More so, perhaps, than that of any other. Your irreverence is out of order." ”

“ He lay at full length on a sheet of metal that was as comfortably resilient and warm as an old-fashioned bed of feathers, and waited expectantly.
"Are you prepared, Earthman?"
"Fire away, braintrust." He wondered at the absence of equipment. Nothing was attached to him—no electrodes, none of the usual electroencephalographic devices. There was only a low hum, and the pale glow from the indistinct walls about him.
"The test begins, Earthman. Display your mind as you see fit." ”

“ BEYOND THE X ECLIPTIC By FOX B. HOLDEN
Earthman was dying of boredom; Hope had become
folly. Work merely a means to avoid insanity. And
death was the great reward ... until Cragin, step-son
of darkest space, dared the Barrier; dared to soar
beyond the X Ecliptic—to the machine-planet—where
The Owners grimly governed all the fading galaxies. ”

“ If there was anything Earth's culture stood for, it was the integrity of the fact—maturation and development of the individual through strict adherence to the known. Only the proven fact was worthy of belief and acceptable as a basis for thought. ”

“ I don't believe in the Owners as masters of all, Patrolman, despite their extreme advances in the realm of both pure and applied science. You do. You do, because they symbolize the scientific ultimate.... But science was only ever meant to be a useful tool for men. ”

“ Once returned to the X Ecliptic, Cragin, I shall set the vibrokey adrift within its circumference, to set up a vibration field which will negate any form of other energy, including counter-vibrations, and which will mean complete destruction to any form of matter. I intend to activate the key from the machine-planet itself with nothing more complex than a simple radar beam, after I have restored the solar system to its original values. ”

“ Once Lin Griffin took her trim craft into Space it would be routine, if her bosses, if she were actually heading for any, didn't risk a track beam on her. If they did and picked him up at the same time, they'd need faster guns than he had.
The SP-15 looked brand new, and Cragin had little more than buttoned her up when flight control beamed him. He kept the Griffin ship tracked for a full minute, let it cut the edge of the Mars ecliptic before he cut in his own drive. ”

“ The nose of this barrel was about to do a little Barrier-busting."
The faded smile returned to Lin Griffin's age-contorted face. She had not been completely immune to the device of her own making; even her brilliance had been unable to devise a vibration scheme which would resolve to zero the reaction effects of dimension transferal through alteration of atomic vibration patterns.
"I wanted to see Earth again, Cragin. I don't know if you understand that or not. Love is a common word, but few understand it. ”

“ You talk slow, but you get a little ahead of yourself. This outfit is supposed to be cached away with such cleverness that an Earth-mind wouldn't be up to locating it. Only we did. We're not as dumb as we look, even to you. ”

“ It wasn't built to serve men. It rules them. For want of a better term, call it a control point. Because the machine-planet has absolute control over the axial rotation and orbital revolution of every planet in the solar system ”

“ If she loses it, we lose her for good."
"You think she'll make it to this side?"
"If she's lost, no, sir. She'll just keep on out there until—"
"Until?"
"Until her comptometers break down, until her drive is exhausted, until she makes a mistake. Until eternity."
"Sir," Kramer broke in. "Three minutes since pick-up. Her trajectory's whacky. She's sort of side-slipping in, but at the speed she's making, she's going to miss Barrier just by the width of her skin. She'll tangent off sure." Kramer thrust a hastily prepared three dimensional plot-check forward. ”

“ Not an expression caused purely by reflex in time of danger or pain; not one carefully controlled after finding an unpleasant solution to an inescapable problem. Neither of those. But what others....
Cragin looked then to what he might be more successful in understanding. The testing place which had been readied for him was a small, independent laboratory, much like the control room of the machine-planet, save for the complete absence of telescreens. And awaiting him were two cloaked figures in red mail—technicians, second grade. ”

“ I vibrated a guard into senility. He died of old age within seconds. In what simple uniform he wore and with his weapon, I bluffed my way aboard this ship in which we stand now. I had to kill a pilot and three crewmen before I was successful in tuning the key to a dimension existing in a completely different pattern of atomic vibrations. ”

“ By himself, he'd never had more than seven comps to fly on, and had never taken the risk of flying past breakdown. That was suicide. The SP-15 had been fitted with ten as he had ordered. According to the books, if you tried to use more than that, the circuits in One would burn up. Nobody, except Fowler Griffin and his daughter, had ever tried past seven except himself. The risk wasn't worth what you got out of it, and listening to a bunch of comps getting ready to blow themselves to hell didn't net you anything but a bad heart. ”

“ He checked the gun circuits, tried the detectors for a track, jacked in the comptometer bank. One began to hum a little and it took him off guard; he hadn't expected it this soon. She had picked up speed and was going like hell even for a Barrier-bust. But he was certain she hadn't spotted him, and he was flying in her blind spot to keep out of her electroscopes. Sooner or later she'd check in her radar proximity beams and when they didn't work—If she were as smart as she looked she'd be swinging her electroscope lenses all over the sky. ”

“ Scientists who had long since learned the secret of the Barrier? Hardly, or his warning would have gone unheeded save for a polite acknowledgement. Who then—another explorer as Fowler Griffin had been? Or someone else who had stumbled onto the presence of the X Ecliptic and the machine-planet? ”