Ray Cummings

“ He left her. The wooden incline sloped sharply upward. The fog momentarily seemed clearing. Martt saw above him the outlines of the houses, a broad platform connecting them. And stretched the length of the platform was the huge, recumbent figure of a man. He seemed about forty feet tall. He lay hunched, cramped for space, with one arm upflung to the roof of a house, and one leg dangling nearly to the water.
Martt reached the platform. He crept past the giant's legs. The waist, wrapped in a skin, was rising and falling with the giant's breathing. Martt's own breath was held. ”

“ In truth, I was indeed in no mood for daring, for my mind was obsessed with Anita's safety. I had been planning that we might see the glow of Miko's encampment, and then return to Grantline and hope that he would have the portes repaired.
"But Gregg—the safety of the treasure—of all the Grantline men. . . ."
"To the infernal with that! It's you—your safety."
"My safety, then! If you put me in the camp and the brigands attack it and I am killed—what then? But this plan of mine, if we can do it, Gregg . . . safety, in the end, for all of us." ”

“ A nightmare with only the horrible vision of this goggled helmet always before my eyes.
It seemed that we were rolling on the ground, back on the summit. The unshadowed Earthlight was clear and bright. The abyss was beside me. Coniston, rolling, was now on top, now under me, trying to shove me over the brink. It was all like a dream—as though I were asleep, dreaming that I did not have enough air.
I strove to keep my senses. He was struggling to roll me over the brink. Ah, that would not do! But I was so tired. One cannot fight without oxygen! ”

“ The giant jungle was shrinking . . . passing slowly, but ever faster.
A fantasy . . . the dream of a child. . . .
Rokk called again. Their pace slackened. Frannie saw an open space ahead. Coarse white sand—a patch of it half a mile in extent. Beyond it a broad beach. Water shining off there. The lake, with stars above it.
The dhranes ran more slowly. The white open space shrank as they traversed it. The beach rushed at them. It had narrowed. Frannie saw it as almost of normal aspect—the narrow shore of the island. The lake was starlit — beautiful. ”

“ The water grew warmer. Small islands appeared. The dhranes panted with the heat of the water; in the muddy channels between the islands, sometimes they floundered. Steam was in the air; ahead it lay like a bank of fog, with the frowning mountains rising above it.
Presently, through the fog, the houses of Reaf came into view. Small ghostly outlines of houses on stilts. To the right of them was a yawning black mouth where one of the rivers plunged into the mountain. The turgid current was swinging that way; Rokk urged the dhrane across it, to the left. ”

“ I could see the house shifting on its foundations; a corner of it tilted downward.
"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 threshhold. 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. ”

“ To my own imagination—and I think very likely to your own—it is difficult to conceive of an infinite distance beyond the stars—empty Space stretching out forever. Nor is Einstein more satisfying to me, rather less so, for out beyond the Einstein system of curved Space must lie something or nothing. It is the nothingness which puzzles me. I have tried vainly to imagine a realm, infinitely large, of unending nothingness. Time is equally puzzling. ”

“ The towering wall of Archimedes was beside us; and beyond the brink of the ledge the thousands of feet down to the plains.
I SAW the lights of Miko's band down there. He had stopped signaling. His little lights were spread out, bobbing as he and his men advanced up the crater's foothills, coming to join their ship.
I had an instant's glimpse. Anita and I could not stay here. The brigands would follow us up in a moment, I saw no exterior ladder. We would have to take our chances and jump. ”

“ But as Martt implies, you are no doubt impatient. I will tell you then, briefly, that for most of my life I have been delving into this subject—Matter, Space, Time and Motion illimitable. Longing to investigate this immense material universe which I believe exists. But we humans are fettered, Frank. Like an ant, living for a brief moment enchained with a cobweb to a twig and trying to envisage the earth. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ At first Frannie clung tensely to the antlers; but soon she found it was not necessary to do so. The dhrane ran with long, smooth bounds; sure-footed on the rocks as a chamois, noiseless, lithe as a great cat. It ran, with head extended, low to the ground; beneath her, Frannie could feel the play of its smooth muscles, rippling under its shaggy skin.
The woman Mobah rode her dhrane behind Frannie. Leela was directly ahead, with Rokk leading. In single file they bounded forward. Leela's black hair and draperies flew in the wind. ”

“ Anita's thoughts were upon that, for she added:—
"Grantline will not dare show his light! If he does. Set Potan, we can blast him with a ray from here! Can't we?"
"Yes," Potan agreed. "If he comes within ten miles, I have one powerful enough. We are assembling it now."
"And we have thirty men?" Anita persisted. "When we sail down to attack him it should not be very difficult to kill all the Grantline party. Thirty of us—that's enough to share in this treasure. I'm glad Miko is dead."
"By Heaven, Haljan, this girl of yours is small, but very bloodthirsty!" ”

“ In the white glow of a search-beam we climbed the crags, reached the broad upper ledge. Helmeted figures rushed at us, searched us for weapons, seized our helmet lights. The evil face of a giant Martian peered at me through the visors. Two other monstrous, towering figures seized Anita. ”

“ I want you to realize, Frank, how wholly dependent each of these factors is upon the other. Matter, for instance, is an entity persisting in Space and Time. Motion is the simultaneous change of the position of Matter in Space and Time. A thing was here, then; it is there, now. That is Motion. You see how you can not deal with one without involving the others?"
"Say, Father, why don't you tell him what we're going to do?" Martt demanded. "Frank, listen—tonight Brett and I——"
"But I'm going, too," Frannie declared.
"You're not!"
I saw again that look of fear in old Dr. Gryce's eyes. ”

“ Brett added, as his father paused. "Unending Space both smaller and larger than ourselves. We—everything of which we can be physically aware—represent no more than a single step in the ladder which has no bottom nor no top. You can not conceive an end in either direction. There is no such thing. Nor—as Father says—can you declare anything to be small or large considered by itself alone. This then is Space as we conceive it to be. Illimitable, unending—infinite Space." ”

“ For all our acting, how easy it would be for some small chance thing abruptly to undo us! I realized it, and now, as I gazed into the peering faces of these men from Mars, I cursed my witless rashness which had brought Anita into this!
The brigands—some ten or fifteen of them here on the deck—stood in a ring around us. They were all big men, nearly of a seven-foot average, dressed in leather jerkins and short leather breeches, with bare knees and flaring leatherboots. Piratical swaggering fellows, knife-blades mingled with small hand-projectors fastened to their belts. ”

“ The mind always takes its personal viewpoint. Frannie and Leela were dwindling into smallness. But now that the nausea and dizziness were past, to them, they alone were normal. Everything else seemed changing . . . the whole scene, growing gigantic. . . .
It was a slow, crawling growth—a steady, visible movement. The ground beneath their feet was a fine white sand. To Frannie's sight this patch of sand had originally been some ten feet, with the arcade wall on one side, and a thicket on the other. But the ground was shifting outward with herself as a center. ”

“ The post soon was too small for Martt to hold. He reached over and steadied himself upon the grass roof of the nearest house. It was melting under his hands. The sleeping giant lay at his feet, a giant no longer; a man, like himself—the two of them crowding a tiny, flimsy platform with toy houses beside it, and black water flowing sluggishly close underneath. ”

“ With breakfast finished Brett had resumed the discussion. We were all seated in the arbor. Martt and Frannie momentarily were quiet, seemingly keenly interested in the impression upon me which they anticipated would come from their father's disclosures.
Dr. Gryce said, "The idea of Time unending is indissolubly bound with the concept of infinite Space. You will realize, Frank, for some centuries it has been understood that Time and Space are inextricably blended. We think instinctively of Space as a tangible entity—of length, breadth and thickness. And of Time, as intangible. ”

“ Suppose we say these planets, stars—all the starry universe within our ken and this visual space which contains them—suppose we imagine all that to be contained within the atom of a particle of matter of some comparatively still larger realm? At once our world and ourselves shrink into smallness. Where a moment ago we had seemed large, now we seem small. Yet that other gigantic world within which we are contained—if we could live in it our telescopes would show us still larger Space unending. We would feel tiny—and of actuality we would be tiny—contemplating Space and size so much larger. ”

“ The outside man met me near the admission lock-chambers of the main building. The duty-man here sat at his controls, raising the air-pressure in the locks through which the outside watchman was coming. The relief sat here in his bloated suit, with his helmet on his knees. It was Wilks.
"Nothing yet, Haljan. I'm going up to the peak of the crater to see if anything is in sight. I wish that damnable brigand ship would come and get it over with."
Instinctively we all spoke in half whispers, the tenseness bearing in on us.
The outside man came out of his helmet. ”

“ For an instant it seemed to Grantline that they would go over; then they surged back, momentarily out of sight.
Grantline found his wits. "Stop them! I'll go out to stop them! What fools!"
He was hastily donning one of the Erentz suits which stood at the lock entrance. "Shut off that siren, Franck!"
Within a minute Grantline was ready. The duty-man called from the window:
"Still at it! By the infernal, such fools! They'll kill themselves!"
The figures had swayed back into view, then out of sight again.
"Franck, let me out."
Grantline was ready. He stood, helmet in hand. ”

“ Mountains showed ahead—and to the sides. Giant faces of rock, looming into unfathomable distance of the black sky. The mountains were drawing closer; contracting, rushing down with a violent movement.
Martt apprehensively glanced behind. A wall of dwindling rock was coming after them. The drug in these larger doses seemed acting with a multiplied power. The scene was a dizzy swirl of movement. Mountains closing in everywhere. To Martt came a flash of terror. They would be crushed. Their bodies were growing tremendously to fill this constricted space. . . .
Degg had stopped walking. ”

“ I plunged into a glib account of our supposed wanderings to find the Grantline camp; its location off in the Mare Imbrium—hidden in a cavern there. Potan, with the drink, and under the gaze of Anita's eyes, was in a high good humor. He laughed when I told him that we had dared to invade the Grantline camp, had smashed its exit portes, had even gotten up to have a look at where the ore was piled.
"Well done, Haljan! You're a fellow to my liking!" But his gaze was on Anita. "You dress like a man, or a charming boy." ”

“ 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. ”

“ All had been killed on board save Anita and me. We had escaped, awaited his coming. The treasure was here; we had located the Grantline camp, and were ready to lead him to it.
Did he believe me? He listened quietly. He seemed not shocked at the death of his comrades. Nor yet pleased: merely imperturbable.
I added with a sly, sidelong glance, "There were too many of us on the Planetara. The purser had joined us, and many of the crew. And there was Miko's sister, the Setta Moa—too many. The treasure divides better among less." ”

“ Leela said, with a quiver in her voice that she tried to hold to calmness, "He tells me that his name is Rokk. This woman here is his mate—he calls her Mobah. He says they come from a very big world—down here to our world of infinite smallness. Oh, Frannie, what can we do? He says they are going to take us with them, up there to that Giant World." ”

“ Perhaps we would find a secret opportunity to flash a signal to Earth. This ship, I was confident, would have the power for a long-range signal, if not of too sustained a length. It was a desperate thing to attempt, but our whole procedure was desperate! And I felt—if Anita perhaps could cajole the guard or the duty-man from the signal-room—I might send a single flash or two that would reach the Earth. Just a distress call, signed "Grantline." If I could do that and not get caught Anita was engaging Potan in talking of his plans. ”