The vitality of the sleeper is most profoundly affected by the operations of the Alphate dial ... It is believed that the Somniac may be awakened by a suitable manipulation of the ego-flow so calculated as to stock the sleeper to survive a severing of the quasi-amniotic wiring system."
I rose and tucked the notes into my belt. That was enough for me! I'd have to experiment, and most likely make a few mistakes, but in a few hours men would be awake to grow hard and strong again after their long sleep, to pluck out their wires themselves, and to take my yttrium and with it build the needed war-machines against the Martians. No more sleep for Earth! And perhaps a new flowering of life when the crisis of the invaders was past?
"The compleat heroine – quite!" I chortled aloud as I passed through the door. I glanced at the glowing panel, but it glowed no longer – the unknown speaker had said his piece and was done. Onward and outward to save the world, I thought.
"Excuse me," said a voice.
I spun around and saw a fishy individual staring at me through what seemed to be a small window.
"What are you doing awake?" I asked excitedly.
He laughed softly. "That, my dear young lady, is just what I was about to ask you."
"Come out from behind that window," I said nervously. "I can hardly see you."
"Don't be silly," he said sharply. "I'm quite a few million miles away. I'm on Mars. In fact, I'm a Martian."
I looked closer. He did seem sort of peculiar, but hardly the bogey-man that his race had been cracked up to be. "Then you will please tell me what you want," I said. "I'm a busy woman with little time to waste on Martians." Brave words. I knew it would take him a while to get from Mars to where I was; by that time I would have everyone awake and stinging.
"Oh," he said casually. "I just thought you might like a little chat. I suppose you're a time-traveller."
"Just that."
"I thought so. You're the fourth – no, the fifth – this week. Funny how they always seem to hit on this year. My name is Alfred, John Alfred."
"How do you do?" I said politely. "And I'm Mabel Evans of Colchester, Vermont. Year, 1940. But why have you got a name like an Earthman?"
"We all have," he answered. "We copied it from you Terrestrials. It's your major contribution to our culture."
"I suppose so," I said bitterly. "Those jellyfish didn't have much to offer anybody except poetry and bad sculpture. I hardly know why I'm reviving them and giving them the yttrium to fight you blokes off."
He looked bored, as nearly as I could see. "Oh, have you some yttrium?"
"Yes."
"Much?"
"Enough for a start. Besides, I expect them to pick up and acquire some independence once they get through their brush-up with Mars. By the way – when will you invade?"
"We plan to colonize," he said, delicately emphasizing the word, "beginning about two years from now. It will take that long to get everything in shape to move."
"That's fine," I said enthusiastically. "We should have plenty of time to get ready, I think. What kind of weapons do you use? Death-rays?"
"Of course," said the Martian. "And heat rays, and molecular collapse rays, and disintegrator rays, and resistance rays – you just call it and we have it in stock, lady.
He was a little boastful. "Well," I said, "you just wait until we get a few factories going – then you'll see what high-speed, high-grade production can be. We'll have everything you've got – double."
"All this, of course," he said with a smug smile, "after you wake the sleepers and give them your yttrium?"
"Of course. Why shouldn't it be?"
"Oh, I was just asking. But I have an idea that you've made a fundamental error."
"Error my neck," I said. "What do you mean?"
"Listen closely, please," he said. "Your machine – that is, your time-traveller – operates on the principle of similar circles, does it not?"
"I seem to remember that it does. So what?"
"So this, Miss Evans. You postulate that firstly the circumference of all circles equals infinity times zero. Am I right?"
That was approximately what Stephen had said, so I supposed that he was. "Right as rarebits," I said.
"Now, your further hypothesis is probably that all circles are equal. And that equal distances traversed at equal speeds are traversed in equal times. Am I still right?"
"That seemed to be the idea."
"Very well." A smug smile broke over his fishy face. He continued. "Your theory works beautifully – but your machine – no."
I looked down at myself to see if I were there. I was. "Explain that, please," I said. "Why doesn't the machine work?"
"For this reason. Infinity times zero does not equal a number. It equals any number. A definite number is represented by x; any number, n. See the difference? And so unequal circles are still unequal, and cannot be circumnavigated as of the same distance at the same speed in the same time. And your theory – is a fallacy."
He looked at me gloatingly before continuing. Then, slowly, "Your theory is fallacious. Ergo, your machine doesn't work. If your machine doesn't work, you couldn't have used it to get here. There is no other way for you to have gotten here. Therefore ... you are not here! and so the projected colonization will proceed on schedule!"
And the light flashed in my head. Of course! that was what I had been trying to think of back in the house. The weakness in Trainer's logic!
Then I went pouf again, my eyes closed, and I thought to myself, "Since the machine didn't work and couldn't have worked, I didn't travel in time. So I must be back with Trainer."
I opened my eyes. I was.
"You moron," I snapped at him as he stood goggle-eyed, his hand on the wall-socket. "Your machine doesn't work!" He stared at me blankly. "You were gone. Where were you?"
"It seemed to be 2700 A.D.,"I answered.
"How was it?" he inquired, reaching for a fresh flask of ethyl.
"Very, very silly. I'm glad the machine didn't work." He offered me .a beaker and I drained it. "I'd hate to think that I'd really been there." I took off the belt and stretched my aching muscles.
"Do you know, Mabel," he said, looking at me hard, "I think I'm going to like this town."
VACANT WORLD
This story was a Three-way collaboration—Cyril myself, and Dirk Wylie—and was originally published under Dirk's name. Dirk was a founding Futurian, and a long-time friend of mine (We met as freshmen at Brooklyn Technical High School, when we were both twelve.) Like most fans and nearly all Futurians, Dirk wanted to be a professional writer. He had talent. He was good at a kind of science fiction nobody seems to write any more: quixotic adventure, I suppose you would call it; the kind of thing That Percival Christopher Wren invented with Beau Geste. In science fiction it exists, among others, in the stories of C. L. Moore, notably the Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith series. I think the chances are good that we might now be saying "in the stories of Dirk Wylie" if a war hadn't come along just as he was hitting his stride. Dirk enlisted early. Like Cyril, he served In The Battle of the Bulge and, like Cyril, he ultimately paid for it with his life. Neither was wounded by enemy fire. What Dirk did was injure his back in a truck. It began to mend, then worsened and tuned into tuberculosis of the spine, and he died of it at the age of twenty-nine.