"At any rate we have to thank the stress-material for holding out so valiantly against law—otherwise we'd not be here."
"What do you mean by that?" snapped Clair.
"Just this. That the stress-material is grateful. You see, we have created this universe and waked it into life. It is this ship that monkey-wrenched the quiescent machinery of the dead cosmos into existence. What is outside we have done.
"We are in the storm-center of the storm we have created; if law had its way we would have been the first item to be destroyed by these incredible forces. However, though it may sound insane, the stress-material displays a touching filial affection toward its parent and so forbears.
"Possibly that is madness. I don't know how long we have before the junk outside knuckles under to dialectics and so destroys us. It may be twenty seconds and it may be twenty billion years."
Clair stared at him, fascinated. "You get the damnedest notions, Paul," he breathed. "But you must be right. Take notes, Jocelyn.
"Memorandum to the academy of science—it has been definitely established that the uniform stress state will obtain until a foreign body provides the center of gravity which, in an infinity or closed-circle finity, which amounts to the same thing, is lacking. The uniform stress state does not appear to be a product of mutual attraction, for attraction in any direction is counterbalanced by an exactly equal attraction to the particles in any other direction. "
"Shall I mail this right away," asked Jocelyn sourly, "or do you want to see the transcript?"
Clair smote his forehead. "Very true," he said. "But I wish I could see Billikin's face when and if he hears of this!" His face changed suddenly. "I'll bet," he said, "he hears of this whether he knows it or not!"
"What does that mean?" asked Gaynor.
"Pavlik, you thick-skulled ape! Did you ever bother to think of what universe we're so busy creating? Our own!
"Don't you see? We couldn't have just stepped outside of space and stayed there for any length of time. We must have been snatched out for just as long as we had the power on, and as soon as it was cut off we slipped back into our own universe—the easy way! That is, the easiest point of entry is at either the beginning or the end, and we happened on the beginning.
"This little chunk of matter—the Prototype—slipped down the entropy gradient, slipped right up again, and busted the mechanics of a static system wide open!"
"So," said Gaynor, "this is the beginning and not the end."
"Sure!" cried Clair.
"How do you tell one from another, esteemed collaborator?"
Clair's face fell. "All right," he said—"what if it is the end instead? We've started it going all over again, so what's the difference?"
"None," said Gaynor.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," Jocelyn interrupted demurely. "To my girlish mind you have strayed far from the essential point. That is—getting the hell out of here. The problem is no less acute despite our newly-discovered godlike qualities. There appears to be an entirely new set of data to work on, and I humbly submit that you get to work on them with an eye to slapping us back into something vaguely resembling a happy home."
"My old grandmother told me once," said Gaynor thoughtfully, "'If you can't drink on a problem, sleep on it. And if you can't sleep on it, eat on it.' She was a crazy old girl. Let's have some lunch, I suggest soup topped with whipped cream, omelette surrounding a heaping platter of fried canned chicken, to be wound up with stewed pineapple and brandied cherries."
"Much as it pains me to contradict you," said Jocelyn firmly, "we're having beans. Hundreds and hundreds of them—not only nourishing but tasty. Not only tasty but economical. Besides, we have to watch our provisions and figures."
They also had to watch their stock of tobacco. In fact they split a cigarette three ways after eating and nearly set fire to Clair's soup-strainer lighting the segments.
"Now," said Gaynor, puffing gingerly, "we know we're not where we thought we were. The question before the house is, how do we get where we want to be?"
"We know," said Jocelyn, "that the utterly useless trickle of juice from the lab is now effectively gimmicked by all the static zipping around outside. We have a generator here which is too incredibly feeble for our purposes to be anything but a lawn ornament. The crying need is power."
Clair mused, "It would be nice if we were outside this infant universe, or at least in a middle-aged one."
"Hold it, Art," snapped Gaynor. "You said outside? Maybe there's all the power we need out there beyond the hull!"
"Yeah—but it'll be a million million years before it's in any form that we can use." He snuffed out his stub of cigarette. "Or maybe—what the hell! If we do get power enough how're we going to make proto out of it?"
"Remember that photo plate, Art?" asked Gaynor.
"Yeah. Radioactive." Then he snapped erect and shouted it, "Radioactive! Everything in this whole damned universe—we're saved, it seems, Paul. You're right—we don't have to build up 99—we've got it right outside!"
V. Pixies
It had taken them a week and a day to lead-sheath a reservoir for the radioactive gasses and to build and sheath a suction pump capable of drawing them in.
"Stand by," said Clair shortly. "Power on."
Gaynor threw the switch of their small, compact generator and Clair focused the electric lens with difficulty on the bulk of the gasses. "Ten seconds," Jocelyn finally announced. "Power off." They had felt nothing. Clair nervously strode to the window. They kept it covered, now. Hesitating a moment he flung the shutter open. The scene had not changed—they were still stranded. "Well, Paul," he asked simply. "Now what—we haven't moved."
"No?" asked Jocelyn sweetly. "Then what do you call that?"
They followed her gaze out of the port. She had, it seemed, been referring to a squadron of flying dragons that were winging their way towards the ship in a perfect V-formation.
"That," said Clair flinging the drivers into 'full speed ahead,' "I call a mistake."
Gaynor moaned gently. "That's no stress-energy. Used to have dreams like this," he gibbered. "Only they weren't quite so big and they didn't breath quite so much flame and they always turned into snakes before they curled up on my chest."
"Planet ahead," said Jocelyn. "It's all alone—hasn't got a sun. What do you make of it?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Clair wearily. "But I'm going to land there. Being chased by flying dragons—especially flying dragons that can fly in a vacuum—is getting us nowhere."
"It's setting us onto that planet," said Jocelyn, "and I don't like its looks."
"We'll land and see what happens first," said Clair, the dominant male. They were hanging over the surface of the globe about a mile up. Suddenly it gulped at them. A huge mouth, the size of one of the Great Lakes, opened in its surface and gulped at them. "Will we?" asked Jocelyn.
"No," said Clair unhappily. "I suppose not." The ship drove on.
Jocelyn laughed madly. "Pixies off the starboard bow," she said in a flat, hysterical voice.
"Yeah?" said Gaynor skeptically. Then he looked. His eyes bulged and his mouth opened and closed apoplectically. "Where the hell are we!" he screamed. "Fairy-land?"