For pixies they were—a gauzy, fluttering band of them!
"Maybe," said Gaynor, "they'll chase off the dragons." But they made no move to do so. Instead they were keeping pace with the ship and rigging up a nasty-looking device with handles and snouts.
"I think," said Jocelyn, "that the Little People plan to do us dirt."
And sundry polychromatic rays shot from the device and struck the ship.
"That tears it!" screamed Gaynor. He flung the dynamo into operation and snapped the lens into focus. Abruptly, they found themselves back in the nascent universe they knew so well, pyrotechnics and all. Jocelyn closed the shutter.
"Now," she said, "teacher offers a big prize to the bright little boy who can tell her what that ghastly district was and why we got there."
Clair and Gaynor stared at her from the floor. "I'm sure I don't know," said Clair dully. "Whatever it was it was awfully silly."
Gaynor moaned, "Flying dragons! I thought I'd left them behind when I had my twenty-first birthday. And dammit, I'm sore at those pixies. They were untraditional. If they'd been imps with spiked tails it would have been understandable—they're expected to muck things up in general. Now, Clair—where were we, the lady asked. I'll consult our instruments."
He rose painfully and opened a graph-box to refer to the continuous record of flight maintained by the tracing needles on endless scrolls of paper.
"I think," he said, "that I know what happened.
"We must hold in mind the unassailable fact that all atoms are similarly constituted in form and all similarly constituted as regards their dynamics. That is to say, the electrons move all in a certain direction at a certain rate of speed.
"This is true of planets and the atoms that compose them; of the atoms that compose our bodies and our sensory organs in particular.
"Now—obviously these sensory organs will perceive only that type of atom which is similar to it in its major characteristics. For example, the eye will not take heed of a substance whose atoms are spinning backwards in relation to the atoms of the eye. But if the atoms of the eye are reversed in their motion they will readily perceive the matter whose electrons are now moving in a similar direction."
Clair said succinctly, "So what?"
"That, esteemed colleague, is what happened to us and the ship. That nasty place we came from is backwards—in the larger sense, I mean."
Jocelyn looked baffled. "Then I was turned upside-down and inside-out to see those nasty people? All I can say is that it was hardly worth the trouble!"
"But," puzzled Gaynor, "why should those creatures be the dead spit and image of all our mythological and childhood bogies?"
"I'm sure I wouldn't know. Quite probably, though, those things can slink through, or at least did slink through at one time to scare the hell out of our ancestors back in the ages primitive. Or possibly our inspired spinners of folklore had something a little wrong with their eyes. It may be that a rod or cone in the retina is peculiar and lets through misty shapes that belong actually to the reverse universe."
"You're probably right," said Jocelyn unexpectedly. "And little children that swear they see fairies and goblins—they must belong in the same class. Sometimes funny things can leak through. We're being frightful iconoclasts this trip—repudiating gravity, cosmogony, and etherics in one breath and establishing folklore in the next as scientific fact."
"Very true," said Clair. "But this cuts no ice. We made a mistake that time somewhere—will it happen again, Pavlik?"
"I don't see why it should," said Gaynor. "Maybe it works alternately. We can try it."
Automatically, he took his place at the power-intake equipment with one hand on the switch that controlled the generator.
"Hold on," said Jocelyn. "If we're getting out of this mess I don't see why we shouldn't celebrate."
The two men looked at one another. "Incredible girl," said Gaynor. Clair said nothing, but reached into the core of an electromagnet and drew out a gleaming three-liter tube bearing the nobel imprint of the House of MacTeague.
"Voici le Scotch," he pronounced with pride. "Get paper cups, Pavlik."
They poured shots of the liquor and touched glasses.
"To the voyage," said Jocelyn.
"To Jocelyn," announced the men in chorus.
They tossed their cups into a refuse container and took their stations. Clair juggled the lens about, adjusting it precisely.
"Power on," he said quietly.
Gaynor threw the switch of the generator, and the power trickled through—perhaps forty thousand volts. There was a dull roaring through the apparatus as Clair swung in the prime switch and moved over the rheostat. Suddenly he was afraid—what if they had been wrong? What if they hadn't moved, and were locked forever within a limitless prison of space? "Ten seconds," he said licking his lips.
Jocelyn opened the shutter with a gesture that had in it something of defiance. There, twinkling before them were a myriad points of light that cut into their souls like icy knives.
Quietly she said, 'Thence issuing, we again beheld the stars."
VI. Stars and Men
The universe they were in was an agreeably middle-aged one, with few giants and a majority of dwarf suns. They didn't know whether it was theirs or one similar, and they didn't much care. They knew that they had only to encounter a reasonably civilized race to provide them with equipment and perhaps some days that were not endless struggle to survive.
What the three voyagers needed was rest. Their chronometer lopped the day into three arbitrary sections which saw always one asleep, one at the lookout plate and one handling the powerful driving engines. They roared along at a speed inconceivable, yet traveling two weeks before the nearest star became apparent as a disk.
Jocelyn was at the port sighting the body with an instrument that would give them its approximate distance, size, and character. "About five hours away from a landing," she announced. "Type, red giant."
"Five hours?" asked Gaynor.
"Right. I can't see planets yet, if there are any. I don't know that they're typical of giant stars."
"There may be some," said Gaynor, his fingers feeling the pulse of fluid in a tube. "And they may be inhabited. And the people may be advanced enough to give us what we want. Then it's home for us all—eh? Maybe you'll get your articles printed after all."
Her haggard face curved into a smile. "And maybe you'll see the look on Billikin's face when you show him those formulae."
"Maybe. Somehow I don't feel inclined to doubt it."
Their chronometer uttered a sharp warning peal, and Clair was awake at once. "To bed, woman," he said. "The dominant male takes over." She handed him the instrument and the slip of paper on which her calculations had been made, and with a feeble gesture of hope and cheer for both of them disappeared behind her curtain.
"Extraordinary woman," said Clair after a pause. "Yeah. I don't see how she keeps going."
"I'm damned if I see how any of us keep going!" cried Clair with a sudden burst of temper.
Gaynor looked at him sharply. "Hold on to yourself, Art," he said. "As the lion said, it always gets darker before it gets lighter. How about that sun out there? Take an observation, will you?"
Clair adjusted the minute lenses and mirrors of the device and read off the result from its calibrated scale. "About three hours at our present rate. But its gravity'll take hold and speed us up most helpful. I think I see a planet."
"Look again—I think you're mistaken."
"Right—I am. It's a meteorite headed our way. Deflect to the left a few degrees if you want to stay healthy."
The ship veered sharply and a great, dark body passed them in silence.