Cosmic Engineers

Chapter Six

A ghostly machine was taking shape upon the hard, pitted, frozen surface of the field… a crazy machine that glimmered weirdly in the half-light of the stars. A machine with mind-wrenching angles, with flashing prisms and spidery framework, a towering skeleton of a machine that stretched out spaceward.

Made of material in which the atomic motion had been stilled, it stood defiant against the most powerful forces of man or void. Anchored magnetically to the core of the planet, it stood firmly planted, a spidery, frail-appearing thing, but with a strength that would stand against the unimaginable drag of a cosmic space-time warp.

From it long cables snaked their way over the frozen surface to the laboratory power plant. Through those slender cables, their resistance lowered by the bitter cold, tremendous power loads could be poured into the strange machine.

"They're space-nuts," grumbled Ted Smith at Gary's elbow. "They're fixing to blow Pluto all to hell. I wish there was some way for me to get away from here before the fireworks start.”

Herbs' voice crackled in Gary's helmet-phones, answering the complaint.

"Shucks, there just won't nothing happen. That contraption looks more like something a kid would build with a tinker toy set than a machine. I can't see, for the life of me, how it'll ever work.”

"I gave up long ago," said Gary. "Caroline tried to explain it to me, but I guess I'm just sort of dense. I can't make head or tall of it. All I know is that it's supposed to be an anchor post, a thing that will help the Engineers set up this space warp of theirs and after it is set up will operate to hold it in position.”

"I never did set any stock in that Engineer talk," Ted told him, "but there's been something I've been wanting to tell you two. Haven't been able to catch you, you've been so busy. But I wanted to tell you about it, for you're the only two who haven't gone entirely star-batty.”

"V/hat is it?" Gary asked.

"Well, you know," said Ted, "I don't attach much meaning to it, but it does seem kind of funny. A few days ago I sneaked out for a walk. Against orders, you know. Not supposed to get out of sight of the settlement. Too many things can happen here.

"But, anyhow, I went for a walk. Out along the mountains and over the carbon dioxide glacier and down into the little valley that lies just over the shoulder of the glacier.”

He paused dramatically.

"You found something there?" asked Gary.

"Sure did," declared Ted proudly. "I found some ruins. Chiseled white stone. Scattered all over the valley floor. As if there had been a building there at one time and somebody had pulled it down stone by stone and threw the stones around.”

"Sure it wasn't just boulders or peculiar rock formations?" asked Gary.

"No, sir," said Ted, emphatically. "There were chisel marks on those stones. Workmen had dressed them at some time. And all of it was white stone. You show me any white stone around here.”

Gary understood what the radio operator meant. The mountains were black, black as the emptiness of space. He turned his head to stare at those jagged peaks that loomed over the settlement, their spearlike points faintly outlined against the black curtain of the void.

"Say," said Herb, "that sounds as if what the Engineers said about someone else living here at one time might be true.”

"If Ted found building stone, that's exactly what it means," Gary asserted.

"That would denote a city of some kind, intelligence of some kind, It takes a certain degree of culture to work stone.”

"But," argued Herb, "how could anyone have lived here? You know that Pluto cooled quick, lost its lighter gases in a hurry. Its oxygen and carbon dioxide are locked up in snow and ice. Too cold for any life.”

"I know all that," Gary agreed, "but it seems we can't be too sure of anything in this business. If Ted is right, it means the Engineers were right on at least one point where we all were wrong. It sort of gives a man more faith in what is going on.”

"Well," said Ted, "I just wanted to tell you. I was going to go out there again some day and look around, but since then I've been too busy. Ever since you sent that story out, space has been full of messages…

governmental stuff, messages from scientists and cranks. Don't give a man no time to himself at all.”

As the radio man walked back to his shack, Gary looked toward the laboratory. Two space-suited figures were coming out of the main lock.

"That's Caroline and Kingsley," said Herb. "They've been up there to talk to the Engineers again. Got stuck on something. Wanted the Engineers to explain it to them.”

"Looks to me like it's about finished," said Gary. "Caroline told me she didn't know just how much longer it would take, but she had hopes of getting it into working order in another day or two. Tommy's gone without sleep the last twenty hours, working to get his ship in tip-top shape.

They've gone over the thing from control panel to rocket tubes.”

"What I'd like to know," said Herb, irritably, "is just how we're going to use the ship in getting out to where the Engineers are.”

"Those are instructions," said Gary. "Instructions from the Engineers. We don't dare do anything around here unless they say it's all right.”

The space-suited figures were coming rapidly down the path to the space-field. Gary hailed them as they came nearer. "Find out what was wrong?" he asked.

Kingsley's voiced boomed at him. "Several things wrong," he declared. "This ought to put it in working shape.”

The four of them advanced on the machine. Gary fell into step with Caroline and looked at the girl's face through her helmet visor. "You look fagged out," he said.

"I am tired," she confessed. They walked a few steps. "We had so much to do," she said, "and apparently so little time to do it in. The Engineers sound as if they are getting desperate. They seem to think the danger is very near.”

"What I can't figure out," Gary told her, "is what we are going to do when we get there. They seem to be head and shoulders over us in scientific knowledge. If they can't work it out, I don't see how we can help them.”

Her voice was full of weariness as she answered him.

"Neither do I," she said, "but they seemed so excited when they found out who we were, when I described our solar system to them and told them that the race had originated on the third planet. They asked so many questions about what kind of beings we were. It took a lot of explaining to get across the idea that we were protoplasmic creatures, and when they finally understood that they seemed even more excited.”

"Maybe," suggested Gary, "protoplasmic beings are a rarity throughout the universe. Maybe they never heard of folks like us before.”

She wheeled on him. "There's something funny about it all, Gary. Something funny about how anxious they are for us to come, how insistent they are in trying to find out so much about us… the extent of our science and our past history.”

He thought he detected a quaver of fear in her voice. "Don't let it get you," he said. "If it gets too funny, we can always quit. We don't have to play their game, you know.”

"No," she said, "we can't do that. They need us, need us to help them save the universe. I'm convinced of that.”

She stepped quickly forward to help Kingsley.

"Hand me that hammer," said Kingsley's voice, and Gary stooped down, picked up the heavy hammer from the base of the machine and handed it to the scientist.

"Hell," complained Herb, "that's all we've done for days now. We've handed you wrenches and hammers and pins and bolts until I see them in my sleep.”

Kingsley's chuckle sounded in their helmets as he swung the hammer against a crossbar, driving it into the mechanism at a slightly different angle.

Gary craned back his neck and gazed up the spiraling, towering height of the machine, out beyond into the blackness of space, studded with cruel-eyed stars. Out there, somewhere, was the rim of space. Out there, somewhere, a race of beings who called themselves the Cosmic Engineers were fighting a great danger which threatened the universe. He tried to imagine such a danger… a danger that would be a threat to that mighty bowl of matter and energy men called the universe, a living, expanding thing enclosed by curving time and space. But his brain swam with the bigness of the thought and he gave it up. It was entirely too big to even think about.

Tommy Evans was coming across the field from the hangar. He hailed them joyously. "The old tub is ready any time you are," he shouted.

Kingsley straightened from adjusting a series of prisms set around the base of the machine. "We're ready now," he said.

"Well, then," said Herb, "let us get going.”

Kingsley stared out into space. "Not yet," he said. "We're swinging out of direct line with the Engineers. We'll wait until the planet rotates again.

We can't hold the warp continuously. If we did, the rotation of Pluto would twist it out of shape. The machine, once the warp is set up, will act automatically, establishing the warp when it swings into the right position and maintaining it through forty-five degrees of Pluto's rotation.”

"What happens," asked Gary, "if we can't complete the trip from here to the edge of the universe before Pluto travels that forty-five degrees? We might roll out of the warp and find ourselves marooned thousands of light-years between galaxies.”

"I don't know," said Kingsley. "I'm trusting the Engineers.”

"Sure," said Herb, "we're all trusting the Engineers. I hope to Heaven they know what they're doing.”

Together the five of them trudged up the path to the main lock of the laboratory. "Something to eat," said Kingsley, "and a good sleep and we'll be starting out. All of us are pretty tuckered now.”

In the little kitchen they crowded around the table, gulping steaming coffee and munching sandwiches. Beside Kingsleys' plate was a sheaf of spacegrams that Ted had brought up for him to read. Kingsley leafed through them irritably.

"Cranks," he rumbled. "Hundreds of them. All with ideas crazier than the one we have. And the biggest one of them all is the government. Imagine the government forbidding us to go ahead with our work. Orders to desist!" He snorted. "Some damn law that the Purity league got passed a hundred years or more ago and still standing on the statutes. Gives the government power to stop any experiment which might result in the loss of life or the destruction of property.”

"The Purity league is still going pretty strong," said Gary, "although it works mostly undercover now. Too much politics mixed up in it.”

He dug into the pocket of his coat and hauled forth a sheet of yellow paper. "I got this a while ago," he said. "I plain forgot about it until now. Too much other excitement.”

He handed the sheet to Kinsgley. The folded paper crackled crisply as Kingsley unfolded it. It was a sheet off the teletype in the Space Pup and it read:

Kingsley crumpled the message savagely in his fist. "When did you get this?" he thundered.

"Just a couple of hours ago," said Gary. "It will take them days to get here.”

"We'll be gone long before they even sight Pluto," Tommy said, his words mumbled through a huge bite of sandwich.

"That's right," agreed Kingsley, "but it makes me sore. The damn government always meddling in other people's affairs. Setting itself up as a judge and jury. Figuring it never can be wrong." He growled wickedly at the sandwich he held in one mighty fist, bit at it viciously.

Herb looked around the room. "This being sort of a farewell banquet," he said, "I sure wish we had something to drink. We ought to drink a toast to the Solar System before we leave it. We ought to make it just a little like a celebration.”

"We'd have something to drink if you hadn't been so clumsy with that Scotch," Gary reminded him.

"Hell," retorted Herb, "that would have been gone long ago, with you making a pass at it every time you came in reach." He sighed and tilted his coffee cup against his face.

Kingsley's laugh thundered through the room. "Wait a minute, boys," he said. He went to a cupboard and removed a double row of canned vegetables from a shelf. A quart bottle filled with amber liquor was revealed. He set it on the table.

"Wash out your coffee cups," he said. "We haven't any glasses.”

The liquor splashed into the coffee cups and they stood to drink a toast.

The telephone in the next room rang.

They set down their cups and waited as Kingsley went to answer it. They heard his roar of excitement and quick fire of rumbling questions. Then he was striding back into the room.

"My assistant, Jensen, was up in the observatory just now," he shouted at them. "He spotted five ships coming in, only a few hours out. Police ships!”

Herb had lifted his cup and now with a clatter it fell to the table, breaking. The liquor dripped to the floor.

Gary flared at him. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. "You get the shakes every time you get anywhere near a drink.”

"That message Gary got," Tommy was saying. "There must have been something wrong. Maybe the ships were out near Neptune when they were ordered out here.”

"What would they be doing out near Neptune?" snapped Herb.

Tommy shrugged. "Police ships are always snooping around," he said. "You find them everywhere.”

They stared at one another in a deathly silence.

"They can't stop us now," whispered Caroline. "They just can't.”

"There's still a couple of hours before the space warp contact with the Engineers would be broken if we set it up now," said Tommy. "Maybe we could make it. The ship is ready.”

"Ask the Engineers," said Gary. "Find out how soon they can get us there.”

Kingsley's voice thundered commands. "Caroline," he was shouting, "get the Engineers! Find out if it would be safe to start now. Tommy, get out the spaceship! The rest of you grab what stuff we need and get down to the field.”

The room was a swirl of action. All of them were rushing for the door.

Kingsley was at the telephone, talking to Andy. "Get the hangar doors open," he was shouting. "Warm up the tubes. We're taking off.”

Through the thud of running feet, the rumbling of Kingsley's voice, came the high-pitched drone of the thought-machine sending set. Caroline was talking to the Engineers.

More snatches of telephone conversation. Kingsley talking with Jensen now.

"Get down to the power house. Stand ready to give us all the juice you have. The leads will carry everything you can throw into them. We'll need a lot of power.”

Gary was struggling into his space-armor when Caroline came into the room.

"We can make it," she shouted excitedly. "The Engineers say we'll be there in almost no time at all. Almost instantaneous.”

Gary held her spacesuit for her while she clambered into it, helped her fasten down the helmet. Kingsley was puffing and grunting, hauling the space-armor over his portly body.

"We'll beat them," he was growling. "Damn them, we'll beat them yet! No government is going to tell me what I can do and what I can't do.”

Out of the air lock, they raced down the path to the field. In the center of the field reared the ghostly machine, like a shimmering skeleton standing guard over the bleakness that was Pluto. As he ran, Gary glanced up and out into space.

A voice sang in his brain, the voice of his own thoughts: "We're coming!

Hang on, you Engineers! We're on our way. Little puny man is coming out to help you. Mankind, is marching to another crusade! To the biggest crusade he has ever known!”

Tommy Evans' mighty ship was at the far end of the field, a gleaming thing of silver, with the tubes a dull red, preheated to stand the sudden flare of rocket blasts in the deadly cold of Pluto's surface.

Yes, thought Gary, another crusade. But a crusade without weapons. Without even knowing who the enemy might be. Without a definite plan of campaign.

With no campaign at all. With just an ideal and the sound of bugles out in space. But that was all man had needed ever. Just an ideal and the blaring of bugles.

Caroline cried out in wonder, almost in fear, and Gary glanced toward the center of the field.

The machine was gone! Where it had stood there was nothing, no faintest hint it had ever stood there. Just empty field and nothing else.

"Jensen turned on the power!" Kingsley shouted. "The machine is warped into another dimension. The road is open to the Engineers.”

Gary pointed out into space. "Look," he yelled.

A faint, shimmering circle of light lay far out into the black depths. A slow wheel of misty white. A nebulous thing that hadn't been there before.

"That's where we go," said Kingsley, and Gary heard the man's breath whistling through his teeth. "That's where we go to reach the Engineers.”