The Paradox Men Page 12

  The three were silent a moment. Finally Gaines said, almost diffidently, “What do you think it means, Alar?”

  “Standing by itself, it means nothing. But viewed in the light of another peculiarity appearing on the plate it might mean a great deal. For example, it seems to suggest the possibility of traveling backward in time. We can talk about it after I’ve seen John Haven and asked him some questions.”

  Alar dropped his opera glasses back into the pocket and moved close to the control panel. He spun the dials back to neutral, flipped the power switch. The light points in the huge room dwindled rapidly into nothingness. For a moment the three of them stood there silently in the heavy darkness which had come with the disappearance of the starry projection. “We’d better leave now,” he said.

  As their eyes grew accustomed to the faint wall lights which had reappeared, Alar stepped on the moving platform, Keiris and Gaines moving in step behind him.

  The platform carried them quietly around the great curving edge of the room to the ramp. They started up the ramp toward the entrance hall beyond the gallery. Near the top, Alar suddenly halted.

  “A guard,” he said. He could see an I.P. officer standing near a huge steel column, hands on hips, talking in a low voice to a second man.

  Keiris was huddled against Alar’s back, Gaines at his side, a firm left hand on his shoulder.

  “We should have nothing to fear,” Gaines said. But the tone of his voice was not quite so positive.

  “It will be best if we’re cautious,” Alar replied. He studied the thin, shriveled figure of the second man. It was the curator. “You wait here. I’ll check out with the curator and inform him we’ll leave by the side exit.” He pointed to the deeper shadows to his left, where a dim red bulb was barely visible. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Before Keiris or Gaines could reply, Alar stalked off toward the two figures.

  Keiris watched him approach the others, anxiety drawing lines on her face. The I.P. officer stepped back a pace, then followed the curator and Alar as they wandered toward the Galactarium office, conversing as they went.

  “Come,” Gaines whispered and led her toward the red light.

  The minute that it took Alar to rejoin them seemed like an hour to her. Her fears were completely swept away when he paced up to her, relaxed and confident.

  “Everything all right?” Gaines asked hoarsely.

  “We’re in no immediate danger, I’m certain,” Alar replied. He caught the swift look from Gaines. “Let’s go away from here first and I’ll explain further.”

  They pushed open the exit, stepped outside. The door swung shut behind them, locking itself. They stood for a second on the side passageway, facing the main corridor fifty feet away.

  “The I.P. asked me to identify myself,” the Thief said. “I gave him my credentials as Dr. Philip Ames and he was satisfied. Then he asked me where the rest of the party was.”

  Gaines frowned, continuing to peer down the passageway toward the main corridor.

  “I explained that I just left you two in the gallery. He asked me, then, what your names were.”

  Keiris sucked her breath in sharply. Gaines turned his head and asked softly, “What did you say?”

  Alar smiled slightly. “I told him the truth.”

  “You did?” Gaines said incredulously.

  “It was the best way. If the I.P. really knew my true identity, nothing would be served by lying. And if he didn’t, then the truth would allay his suspicions.”

  “But he’ll report our get-together to his superiors,” Gaines pointed out. “No one knows we’ve just arrived on the moon. In a couple of hours there’ll be I.P.’s swarming all over us.”

  “I’m afraid,” Alar said ominously, “that they already know. The nonchalance of that I.P. at the mention of your names gave it away to me.”

  After a moment of shocked silence, Gaines said, “I suppose it was too much to expect to hide our arrival. We’ll just have to keep out of sight and not provoke them and hope that they’ll wait until they get direct orders from Thurmond.” Gaines was frowning again. “What do you think, Alar? Should we dodge around a bit in the back passageways or split up?”

  The Thief reflected for a moment. The three of them together would find it more difficult to escape from trouble if it arose, but if they stayed together they would stand a better chance to avoid it.

  “Let’s take a back way,” Alar said. He looked at Keiris, whose eyes had widened in alarm and whose body seemed to have shrunk within her swirling cloak. He glanced at the streak of white which ran across her head and into the knotted bun at the side of her slender neck. She still looked ill. He wished she could be spared all the tension that was being forced into her life. He patted her shoulder briefly. “Don’t worry, Keiris. They don’t have us on the run—we’re just playing it safe.”

  Gaines stalked off, away from the main corridor, without a backward look. As Alar and Keiris started to follow, she exchanged a penetrating glance with him. Her look was so full of tenderness and concern for him—and he involuntarily returned it so forcefully—that he was for the moment emotionally shaken.

  Then she was ahead of him, close behind Gaines.

  They weaved through corridors, criss-crossing the main ones, for nearly half an hour.

  “I’ll try to answer your last question first, my boy,” said John Haven. The biologist studied his protégé warmly as he lit his pipe and took a few experimental puffs. Finally he settled back in his chair. “Do you know what ‘ecstasy’ means?”

  Keiris and Gaines were following avidly.

  “You may assume that I know the dictionary definition, John,” answered Alar, absorbing the older man with keen eyes.

  “That isn’t enough. Oh, it tells you it’s from the Greek verb ‘existani,’ meaning ‘to put out of place.’ But out of place from what? Into what? What is this peculiar mental state known as ‘ecstasy’? All we know is, that it may be attained through alcohol, drugs, savage dancing, music, and in various other ways.

  “During your encounter with Shey, in your moment of greatest need, you probably passed into—or beyond—the state we are discussing. In so doing you burst from your old three-dimensional shell and found yourself in what was apparently a new world.

  “Actually, if I have followed your description accurately, it was simply an aspect of your eternal four-dimensional body, which has three linear dimensions and one ‘time’ dimension. The ordinary human being sees only three dimensions—the fourth time, he senses intuitively as an extra dimension.

  “But when he tries to imagine the shape of a thing extending through the time dimension, he finds that he has simply lost a space dimension. He imagines his body extending through time just as your body did during your experience. In this new world the three dimensions visible to you were two linear and one of time, which combined to give an appearance of regular three-dimensional solidity.”

  “You are saying,” said Alar slowly and thoughtfully, “that I viewed my four-dimensional body through three new dimensions.”

  “Not three new dimensions. They were all old. Height and breadth were the same. The only apparently new dimension was time, substituting for depth. The cross section of your body simply extended with changing time until it became an endless pillar.

  “And you stepped out of your pillar when the pain became unbearable. The difference in your ecstasy and that of the Greeks was that you didn’t have to go back into time at the same moment—or place—that you left.”

  “John,” said Alar with gloomy, almost exasperated surmise, “do you realize that I could have stepped back into time at a period prior to my amnesia? That I could have solved my personal mystery with utter ease? And now—I don’t know how to get back, except perhaps through that unutterable hell of pain.” His chest lifted in vast regret. “Well, then, John? About my other question—who am I?”

  Haven looked toward Gaines.

  “I think I’d better try to answer
that one,” interposed the Undersecretary. “But there isn’t any answer, really. When you crawled up on the river bank five years ago you were clutching something in your hand—this.” He gave Alar a small leather-bound book.

  The Thief studied it curiously. It was water-stained, and the cover and pages had shriveled and warped during drying. The cover was stamped in gold:

  T-22, Log.

  He was breathing considerably faster when he sought Gaines’s eyes. But the Undersecretary simply said, “Look inside.”

  Alar folded back the cover and read the first entry:

  “‘July 21, 2177…’”

  His eyes narrowed. “That’s next week. There’s an error in the date.”

  “Finish the entry,” urged Haven.

  “July 21, 2177. This will be my only statement, since I know where I am going and when I shall return. There is little now to be said and, as perhaps the last living human being, I have no inclination to say it. Within a few minutes the T-22 will be traveling faster than light. Under more cheerful circumstances I should be exceedingly interested in following the incredible evolution that has already started in my companion.”

  That was all.

  “The rest of the book is blank,” said Haven shortly.

  Alar ran nerveless fingers through his hair. “Are you saying that I’m the man who wrote that? That I was on the ship?”

  “You may or may not have been on the ship. But we are certain you didn’t make the log entry.”

  “Who did?”

  “Kennicot Muir,” said Gaines. “His handwriting is unmistakable.”

  13

  Visitor from the Stars

  ALAR’S EYES OPENED a trifle wider and fastened hawklike on the Space Undersecretary. “How,” he asked, “can you be so sure I’m not Kennicot Muir?”

  “He was a larger man. Furthermore, the fingerprints, eye capillaries, pupil chroma, blood type, age and dental and skeletal characteristics are different. We’ve considered the point very carefully, hoping to find points of identity. There aren’t any. Whoever you are, you’re not Kennicot Muir.”

  “And yet,” Alar said, with a grimace which was almost a grin, “is that necessarily conclusive evidence?”

  “Why—what do you mean?” Gaines was honestly puzzled. Haven’s eyes had been almost completely closed in thought, now he opened them wide.

  “It would appear,” Alar said, “that the trip might have caused some very peculiar changes. Isn’t it possible that, as Muir, my body was distorted? Enough so that I am a completely disguised Kennicot Muir? Disguised so well that I can’t even recognize myself?”

  Gaines’s mouth opened and closed several times before he replied: “I think it’s impossible.”

  “Perhaps not impossible,” Haven said slowly, “but improbable, shall we say. As a theory, there is nothing to support it except that a lot of our puzzling questions could be glibly answered by it.”

  “Well, then,” Alar continued, turning first from Gaines to Haven and then back to Gaines. “What about the Meganet Mind?”

  “The Mind?” Gaines repeated, rubbing his chin. “You think Muir might be the Mind?”

  “Yes, I think it’s possible.”

  Gaines chuckled. “It would be a very, very fascinating development if it were true. Unfortunately it isn’t. The only resemblance between the Mind and Muir is in the over-all size of their bodies. There have been investigations several times—that possibility has been discarded.”

  “Investigators can be bribed,” Alar said. He stretched his fingers over the front ends of the arm rests of his chair, shifting his glance briefly to them and then back to the two older men. “Records can be destroyed or forged. Facts can be hidden.”

  “That may be true,” Gaines said flatly. “But I know personally that the Meganet Mind existed long before Muir ever disappeared. Not as the Mind, per se, of course, but even then showing the potential of what he would eventually become.”

  Haven made a clicking noise with his pipe stem against his teeth. “The chances of you, Alar, being Muir,” he said thoughtfully, “as small as they are, are still better than that of the Mind being Muir.”

  During this time Keiris had not taken her eyes from Alar’s face.

  The Thief sighed. “Well, then, that’s that. But what about the date of the entry? July twenty-first, two thousand one hundred and seventy-seven is only a few days off. Since the book is at least five years old Muir must have made a blunder in the date.”

  “We don’t know the answer,” admitted Gaines. “We thought you might.”

  The Thief smiled humorlessly. He said:

  “How could Muir return in the T-twenty-two before it was even built?”

  The room slowly grew quiet. Nothing was audible except Keiris’s suppressed jerky breathing. Alar felt a nerve throbbing restlessly in the small of his back. Haven pulled placidly at his pipe but his eyes missed nothing.

  “The non-Aristotelians at their wildest never suggested that time could be traversed negatively unless—” Alar rubbed the side of his cheek in deep thought. The others waited.

  “You said the pilot panel of the crashed ship indicated the possibility of speeds beyond the velocity of light?” he asked Gaines.

  “So it seemed. The drive proved to be virtually identical with that designed for the T-twenty-two.”

  “But by elementary Einsteinian mechanics trans-photic velocities are impossible,” remonstrated Alar. “Nothing can exceed the speed of light—theoretically, at least. The fact that I may have been aboard a ship similar to the T-twenty-two means nothing to me. In fact the very name T-twenty-two seems meaningless. Where did our T-twenty-two get its name?”

  “Haze-Gaunt adopted the name on a suggestion from the Toynbeean Institute,” replied Gaines. “It is simply an abbreviation of ‘Toynbeean Civilization Number Twenty-two.’ The great historian gave each civilization an index number. The Egyptaic was Number One, the Andean Number Two, the Sinic Number Three, the Minoan Number Four, and so on. Our present civilization, the Western, is Toynbee Number Twenty-one.

  “The Toynbeeans secretly theorized that an interstellar ship might save Toynbee Twenty-one by launching us into a new culture—Toynbee Twenty-two—in the same way the sail launched the Minoan thalassocracy, the horse the nomadic cultures, and the stone road the Roman Empire. So T-twenty-two is more than just the name of a ship. It may prove the life-bridge, linking two destinies.”

  Alar nodded. “Quite plausible. There’s no harm in hoping.” But his thoughts were elsewhere. The Phobos that had brought Gaines was sunward bound. In the solarions would be men who had known Muir intimately. And then this question of negative time. How could a space-ship land before it took off?

  Keiris broke into his revery. “Since we’ve come to a standstill on solving your identity,” she suggested, “suppose you tell us the rest of your star plate discovery. In the Galactarium you said there was more to come.”

  “Very well, then,” agreed Alar. He plunged abruptly into his theme. “Ever since the completion of Lunar Station, we have assumed that it would be just a question of time until we penetrated the whole of space and found our own galaxy at the opposite pole of the universe.

  “That was predictable and my discovery simply bore out the prediction. But there were some other developments in that section of the sky that were not so easily predictable.

  “Let us go back a bit. Five years ago, as any student of astronomy knows, a body of incalculable mass, apparently originating at a point in space near our own sun cluster, possibly quite near our own solar system, sped outward into space.

  “It passed near the M Thirty-one galaxy, disrupted its outer edge with assorted novae and star collisions and then, apparently traveling at a speed greater than light, disappeared about eighteen billion light years out. By ‘disappeared’ I mean that astronomers were no longer able to detect its influence on galaxies near the line of hypothetical flight.

  “The reason they couldn’t was that
they were no longer looking in the right direction. The body had passed the midpoint of the universe, with respect to its point of origin and had begun to return. Naturally it was approaching in the opposite direction, which is of course the same direction in which the lunar reflector must be collimated to pick up our galaxy.

  “In the six weeks that I have studied this sky-sector I have watched the effect of the unknown body on galaxies near its line of return and I have computed its path and velocity, with considerable accuracy. The velocity, incidentally, is decreasing very rapidly from its outer space peak of two billion light years per year.

  “Six weeks ago, when I first began my observations, it had almost completed its circuit of the universe and was returning to our own galaxy. Yesterday it passed so close to the Magellanic Clouds that its attraction drew them toward one another in what may be a collision course. In the Lesser Cloud I have already counted twenty-eight novae.”

  He concluded tersely. “This body will land on Earth on July twenty-first.”

  A hush fell over the group. The only sound for several minutes was the rasping from Haven’s empty pipe.

  “The queer thing,” mused Gaines, “is its varying mass. The disruption of the stars of our own galaxy in Andromeda is an old story, as Alar said. But the Andromeda star cluster was acted upon by something traveling just below the speed of light and with a mass of some twenty million galaxies concentrated at one point.

  “But by the time that body reached the M Thirty-one galaxy some three weeks later, its velocity was many times that of light and its mass was incalculable—possibly bordering on the infinite if such a thing is permissible. I have no doubt but that Alar found the same conditions obtaining for its return—a gradual diminution of velocity and mass until, by the time it reaches Earth, it again has very little mass or velocity, at least none capable of affecting this system. Alar has supplied the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle that has driven astronomers crazy for five years. And now the assembled puzzle is even more incomprehensible than its parts.”