Cosmic Engineers

Chapter Nine

"We can do it," said Caroline. She flicked a pencil against a sheet of calculations. "This proves it," she declared.

Kingsley bent over her shoulder to look at the sheet. "If you don't mind,”

he said, "would you lead me through it all again. Go slowly, please. I find it hard to grasp a lot of it.”

"Kingsley," said Herb, "you're just an amateur. To get as good as she is you'd have to think for forty lifetimes.”

"You embarrass me," she said. "It's very simple. It's really very simple.”

"I'll say it's simple," said Tommy. "Just a little matter of bending space and time into a tiny universe. Wrapping it about a selected bit of matter and making it stay put.”

"You could use it to control the energy," rumbled Kingsley. "I understand that well enough. When the universes begin to rub you could trap the incoming energy in an artificial universe. The energy would destroy that universe, but you'd have another ready for it. What I can't understand is how you form this artificial fourth-dimensional space.”

"It isn't artificial," snapped Gary. "It's real… as real as the universe we live in. But it's made by human beings instead of by some law we have no inkling of.”

He pointed at the sheet of calculations. "Perhaps the secret of all the universe is on that sheet of paper," he declared. "Maybe that's the key to how the universe was formed.”

"Maybe," rumbled Kingsley, "and maybe not. There may be many ways to do it.”

"One," said Gary, "is good enough for me.”

"There's just one thing," said Caroline, "that bothers me. We don't know anything about the fifth-dimensional inter-space. We can imagine that its laws are different from our own. Vastly different. But how do they differ?

What kind of energy would be formed out there? What form would it take?”

She looked from one to the other of them. "That would make a lot of difference," she declared.

"It would," agreed Kingsley. "It would make a lot of difference. It would be like setting a trap for some animal. You might set one for a rat and catch a bear… or the other way around.”

"The Hellhounds know," said Tommy. "They know how to navigate in the inter-space.”

"But they wouldn't tell us," said Gary. "They don't want the universe to be saved. They want it to be wrecked so they can build a new world out of the wreckage.”

"It might be light, or matter, or heat, or motion, or it might be something that's entirely different," said Caroline. "It's not impossible it would be something else, some new fearful form of energy with which we are entirely unacquainted. Conditions would be just as different out in inter-space as fourth-dimensional conditions differ from our three-dimensional world.”

"And to be able to control it we would have to have some idea as to what it is," said Kingsley.

"Or what it would become when it entered the hyperspace," said Gary. "It might be one kind of energy out there, an entirely different kind when it entered our universe.”

"The people of the other universe don't seem to know," Tommy pointed out.

"Even if they are the ones who found out about the universes drifting together. They don't seem to be able to find out too much about it.”

Gary glanced around the laboratory, a mighty vaulted room that glowed with soft, white light… a room with gleaming tiers of apparatus, with mighty machines, great engines purring with tremendous power, uncanny structures that almost defied description.

"The funniest thing about the whole business," he declared, "is why the Engineers themselves can't make any progress. Why do they have to call us in? With all of this equipment, with the knowledge they already hold, it ought to be a cinch for them to do almost anything.".

"There's something queer here," Herb declared. "I've been snooping around a bit and this city is enough to set you batty. There isn't any traffic in the streets. You can travel for hours and you don't see a single Engineer.

No business houses, no theaters, no nothing. All the buildings are empty.

Just empty buildings. A city of empty buildings." He puffed out his breath.

"Like a city that was built and waiting for someone. Waiting for someone who never came.”

Something akin to terror crossed Gary's mind. A queer, haunted feeling… a pity for those magnificent white buildings standing all untenanted.

"A city built for billions of people," said Herb. "And no one in it. Just a handful of Engineers. Probably not more than a hundred thousand altogether.”

Kingsley was clenching and opening his fists again, rumbling in his throat.

"It does seem queer," he said, "that they never found the answer. With all their knowledge, all their scientific apparatus.”

Gary looked at Caroline and smiled. A wisp of a girl. But one who could bend space and time until it formed a sphere… or, rather, a hypersphere.

A girl who could mold space as she wanted it, who could play tricks with it, make it do what she wanted it to do. She could set up a tiny replica of the universe, a little private universe that belonged to her and no one else. No one before, he was certain, ever had dared to think of doing that.

He looked at her again, a swift, sure look that saw the square-cut chin, the high forehead, the braided raven strands about her head. Was Caroline Martin greater than the Engineers? Could she master a problem that they couldn't even touch? Was she, all unheralded, the master mind of the entire universe? Did the hope of the universe lie within her mind?

It seemed impossible. And yet, she had thought of time and space for nearly forty lifetimes. With nothing but a brain to work with, with no tools, no chance of experimentation — all alone, with nothing but her thoughts, she had solved the deep-shrouded mysteries of space and time. Never dreaming, perhaps, that such knowledge could be used to a certain purpose.

Metal feet scraped across the laboratory floor and Gary whirled to come face to face with Engineer 1824. The metal man had advanced upon them unawares.

His thought came to them, clear, calm, unhurried thought, devoid of all emotion, impersonal, yet with a touch of almost human warmth.

"I heard your thoughts," he said, "and I am afraid that you might think I meant to hear them. But I am very glad I did. You wonder why the Engineers brought you here. You wonder why the Engineers can't do this work unaided.”

They stood guiltily, like schoolboys caught at some forbidden act.

"I will tell you," the thought went on, "and I hope you will understand. It is difficult to tell you. Hard to tell you, because we Engineers are full of pride. Conditions being different, we would never tell you.”

It sounded like a confession, and Gary stared at the metal man in stricken surprise, but there was no sign of expression upon the metal face, no hint of thought within the glowing eyes.

"We are an old and tired people," said the Engineer. "We have lived too long. We have always been a mechanistic people and as the years went on we became even more so. We plod from one thing to another. We have no imagination. The knowledge that we have, the powers we hold, were inherited by us. Inherited from a great race, the greatest race that ever lived. We have added something to that knowledge, but so very little. So very, very little when you think of all the time that has passed away since it was handed to us.”

"Oh!" cried Caroline and then put her hand up as if to cover her mouth, and it clanged against the quartz of the helmet. She looked at Gary and he saw pity in her eyes.

"No pity for us, please," said the Engineer. "For we are a proud people and have the right to be. We have kept an ancient trust and kept it well. We have abided by the heritage that is ours. We have kept intact the charge that was given us.”

In the little silence Gary had a sense of ancient things, of old plays played out upon a stage that had dissolved in dust these many thousand years. A sense of an even greater race upon an even greater planet. An old, old heraldry carried down through cosmic ages by these metal men.

"But you are young," declared the Engineer. "Your race is young and unspoiled. You have fallen into no grooves. Your mind is free. You are full of imagination and initiative. I sensed it when I talked with you back in your own system. And that is what we need… that is what we must have.

Imagination to grasp the problem that is offered. Imagination to peer around the corner. A dreaming contemplation of what is necessary to be done, and then the vigorous initiative to meet the challenge that the dream may bring.”

Again a silence.

"That is why we are so glad to have you here," went on the Engineer. "That is why I know I can tell you what must be told.”

He hesitated for a moment and a million fears speared at Gary's brain.

Something that must be told! Something they hadn't known before. An even greater threat to face?

They waited breathlessly.

"You should know," said the Engineer, "but I almost fear to tell you. It is this: Upon you, and you alone, must rest the fate of the universe. You are the only ones to save it.”

"Upon us," cried Tommy. "Why, that is mad! You can't mean it!”

Kingsley's hands were clenched and the bearish rumble was rising in his throat. "What about those others?" he asked. "All those others you brought here, along with us?”

"I sent them back," declared the Engineer. "They were no help to us.”

Gary felt the cold wind from space reach out and flick his face again. Man — and Man alone — stood between the universe and destruction. Little, puny Man. Man, with a body so delicate that he would be smashed to a bloody pulp if exposed unprotected to the naked gravity of this monstrous world. Little Man, groping toward the light, groping, feeling, not knowing where he went.

And then the blast of trumpets sounded in the air — the mythical trumpets calling men to crusade. The ringing peal that for the last ten thousand years has sent Man out to war, clutching at his sword.

"But why?" Kingsley was thundering.

"Because," said the Engineer, "we could not work with them. They could not work with one another. We could hardly understand them. Their process of intelligence was so unfathomable, their thought process so twisted, that understanding was almost impossible. How we ever made them understand sufficiently to bring them here, I will never know. Many times we almost despaired. Their minds are so different from ours, so very, very different.

Poles apart in thought.”

Why, sure, thought Gary, that would be the way one would expect to find it.

There was no such thing as parallel physical evolution, why should there be parallel mental evolution?

"Not that their mentality is not as valid as our intelligence," said the Engineer. "Not that they might not have even a greater grasp of science than we. But there could have been no co-ordination, no understanding for us to work together.”

"But," said Caroline, "we can understand your thoughts. You can understand ours. And yet we are as far removed from you as they.”

The Engineer said nothing.

"And you look like us," said Tommy, quietly. 'We are protoplasm and you are metal, but we each have arms and legs…”

"It means nothing," said the Engineer. "Absolutely nothing how a thing is made, the shape that one is made in." There was almost an edge of anger in his thoughts.

"Don't you worry, old man," said Herb. 'We'll save the universe. I don't know how in hell we'll do it, but we'll save it for you.”

"Not for us," the Engineer corrected, "but for those others. For all life that now exists within the universe. For all life that in time to come may exist within the universe.”

"There," said Gary, hardly realizing that he spoke aloud, "is an ideal big enough for any man.”

An ideal. Something to fight for. A spur that kept Man going on, striving, fighting his way ahead.

Save the universe for that monstrosity in the glass sphere with its shifting vapors, for the little, wriggling, slug-like things, for the mottled terror with the droopy mouth and the glint of humor in his eyes.

"But how?" asked Tommy. "How are we going to do it?”

Kingsley ruffled at him. "We'll do it," he thundered.

He wheeled on the Engineer. "Do you know what kind of energy would exist within the inter-space?" he asked.

"No," said the Engineer, "I cannot tell you that. Perhaps the Hellhounds.

But that's impossible.”

"Is there any other place?" asked Gary in a voice cold as steel. "Anyone else who could tell us?”

"Yes," said the Engineer. "There is one other race. I think that they might tell you. But not yet. Not yet. It is too dangerous.”

"We don't care," said Herb. "We humans eat up danger.”

"Let us try it," said Gary. "Just a couple of us. If something happened, the others would be left to carry on…”

"No," said the Engineer, and there was a terrible finality in the single thought.

"Why can't we go out ourselves and find out?" asked Herb. "We could make a little universe just for ourselves. Float right out into this fifth-dimension space and study the energy that we find.”

"Splendid," purred Kingsley. "Absolutely splendid. Except there isn't any energy yet. Won't be until the two universes rub and then it will be too late.”

"Yes," said Caroline, smiling at Herb, "we have to know before the energy is produced. When the universes rub, it will flood in upon us in such great quantity that we'll be wiped out almost immediately. The first contracting rush of space and time will engulf us. Remember, we're just inside the universal rim.”

"I do not entirely understand," said the Engineer. "You spoke of making a universe. Can you make a universe? Bend space and time around a predetermined mass? I am afraid you jest. That would be difficult.”

Gary started. Was it possible that Caroline had done something an Engineer thought impossible to do? Standing here, it seemed so simple, so commonplace that space-time could be bent into a hypersphere. Nothing wonderful about it. Just something to be slightly astonished at and argued about. Just a few equations spread upon a sheet of paper.

"Sure we can," bellowed Kingsley. "This little lady has it figured out.”

"The little lady," commented Herb, "is a crackajack at figures.”

The Engineer reached out his hand to take the sheet of calculations that Kingsley was handing to him. But as he reached out his arm little red lights began to blink throughout the laboratory and in their ears sounded a shrill, high-pitched whine — a whine that held a note of sinister alarm.

"What's that?" yelled Kingsley, dropping the sheet.

The thought of the Engineer came to them as calm as ever, as absolutely devoid of emotion as it bad always been.

"The Hellhounds," he said "The Hellhounds are attacking us.”

As he spoke, Gary watched the sheet of paper flutter to the floor, a little fluttering sheet that held the key to the riddle of the universe scratched upon it in the black scrawlings of a soft-lead pencil.

The Engineer moved across the laboratory to a panel. His metallic fingers reached out, deftly punched at studs. A wall screen lighted up and on it they saw the bowl of sky above the city. Ships were shooting up and outward, great silver ships that had grim lines of power about them. Up from the roofs they arrowed out into space, squadron after squadron, following a grim trail to the shock of combat. Going out to meet the Hellhounds.

The Engineer made adjustments on the panel and they were looking deeper into space, far out into the darkness where the atmosphere had ended. A tiny speck of silver appeared and rapidly leaped toward them, dissolving into a cloud of ships. Thousands of them.

"The Hellhounds," said the Engineer.

Gary heard Herb suck in his breath, saw Kingsley's hamlike hands clenching and unclenching.

"Stronger than ever," said the Engineer. "Perhaps with new and more deadly weapons, perhaps more efficient screens. I am afraid, so very much afraid, that this means the end of us… and of the universe.”

"How far away are they?" asked Tommy.

"Only a few thousand miles now," said the Engineer. "Our alarm system warns us when they are within ten thousand miles of the surface. That gives us time to get our fleet out into space to meet them.”

"Is there anything we can do?" asked Gary.

"We are doing everything we can," said the Engineer.

"But I don't mean you," said Gary. "Is there anything the five of us can do? Any war service we can render you?”

"Not now," said the Engineer. "Perhaps later there will be something. But not now.”

He adjusted the screen again and in it they watched the defending ships of the Engineers shooting spaceward, maneuvered into far-flung battle lines — like little dancing motes against the black of space.

In breathless attention they kept their eyes fixed on the screen, saw the gleaming points of light draw closer together, the invaders and the defenders. Then upon the screen they saw dancing flashes that were not reflections from the ships, but something else — knifing flashes that reached out, probed and stabbed and slashed, like a searchlight's beam cuts into the night. A tiny pinpoint of red light flashed momentarily and then went out. Another flamed, like lightning bugs of a summer night, except the flash was red and seemed filled with a terrible violence.

"Those flashes," breathed Caroline. 'What are they?”

"Exploding ships," said the Engineer. "Screens break down and the energy drains out and then an atomic bomb or ray finds its way into them.”

"Exploding ships," said Gary. "But whose?”

"How can I tell?" asked the Engineer. "It may be theirs or ours.”

Even as he spoke a little ripple of red flashes ran across the screen.