Was there any other entity in the universe qualified to use it? Would it be wise to place such power in the hands of any entity?
"But why," Caroline was asking, "do they want to come?”
"Because," said the Engineer, "we are going to destroy their universe to save ours.”
It was as if a bombshell had been dropped among them. Silence clapped down.
Gary felt Caroline's hand creep into his. He held it tight.
"But why destroy their universe?" shouted Tommy. "We have the means at hand to save them both. All we have to do is create more of those five-dimensional screens to absorb the energy.”
"No," said the Engineer, "we cannot do it. Given time, we could. But there is so little time, not nearly enough. The energy would overwhelm us once it came. It would take so many screens and we have so little time.”
His thoughts cut off and Gary heard the shuffle of Kingsley's feet.
"These other beings," the Engineer went on, "know that their universe has very little longer to exist in any event. It has almost reached the end of its time. It soon will die the heat death. Throughout its space, matter and energy are being swiftly distributed. Soon the day will arrive when it will be equally distributed, when the heat, the energy, the mass throughout the universe will be spread so thin that it scarcely exists.”
Gary sucked in his breath. "Like a watch running down," he said.
"You're right," said Kingsley. "Like a watch that has run down. That is what will happen to our universe in time.”
"Not," said Gary, "if we have the energy from interspace at our command.”
"Already," said the Engineer, "only one corner of this other universe is still suitable for life… the area that is facing us. Into that corner all life has been driven and now it has been, or is being, assembled to transfer itself to our universe.”
"But," asked Herb, "just how are they going to get here?”
"They will use a time warp," said the Engineer. "They will bud out from their universe, but in doing so they will distort the time factor in the walls of their hypersphere — a distortion that will send them ahead in time, will push their little universe closer to us than to their universe.
Our gravity will grasp their hypersphere and draw it in.”
"But that," protested Gary, "will produce more energy. Their little universe will be destroyed.”
"No," declared the Engineer, "because they will merge their space-time continuum with the continuum of our universe as soon as the two come together. They will immediately become a part of our universe.”
"You told them how to create a hypersphere?" asked Herb.
"I did," said the Engineer. "And it will save the people of that other universe. They had tried many things, had worked out theories and new branches of mathematics in their efforts to escape. They discovered many things that we do not know, but they never thought of budding out from their universe. They apparently are a mechanistic people, a people very much like we Engineers. They seem to have lost that vital spark of imagination with which your people are so well supplied.”
"My Lord," said Gary, "think of it! Imagination saving the people of another universe. The imagination of a little third-rate race that hasn't even started really using its imagination yet.”
"You are right," declared the Engineer, "and in the aeons to come that imagination will make your race the masters of the entire universe.”
"Prophesy," said Gary.
"I know," said the Engineer.
"There's just one thing," said Herb. "How is that other universe going to be destroyed?”
"We are going to destroy it," said the Engineer, "in exactly the same way we destroyed the Hellhounds.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tommy sat in the pilot's seat and urged the ship slowly forward, using rocket blast after rocket blast to keep it on its course.
"You have to fight to stand still here," he gritted between his teeth. "A man can't tell just where he is. There doesn't seem to be any direction, nothing to orient oneself.”
"Of course not," rumbled Kingsley. "We're in a sort of place no other man has ever been. We're right out in the area where space and time are breaking down, where lines of force are all distorted, where everything is jumbled and broken up.”
"The edge of the universe," said Caroline.
Gary stared out through the vision plate. There was nothing to see, nothing but a deep blue void that queerly seemed alive with a deep intensity of life.
He turned from the panel and asked the Engineer:
"Any signs of energy yet?”
"Faint signs," said the Engineer, bending lower to peer at the dial set in a detector instrument. "Very faint signs. The other universe is almost upon us now and the lines of force are just beginning to make themselves felt.”
"How much longer will it take?" asked Kingsley.
"I cannot tell," said the Engineer. "We know very little about the laws out here. It may be a very short while or it may be some time as yet.”
"Well," said Herb, "the fireworks can start any time now. The folks from the other universe have crossed safely and there's no reason for the other universe to exist. We can blast it any time we want to.”
"Gary," said Kingsley, "you and Herb better get over to those guns. We may want action fast.”
Gary nodded and walked to the controls of a disintegrator gun. He slid into the seat back of the controls and reached out a hand to grasp the swivel butt. He swung it back and forth, knew that outside the ship the grim muzzle of the weapon was swinging in a wide arc.
Through the tiny port in front of him he could see the blue intensity of the void in which they moved.
Out here time and space were thinning down and breaking up. Like a boat riding on the surface of a heaving sea, they were riding the very rim of the universe, their ship tossed about by the shifting, twisting co-ordinates of force.
Out there somewhere, very close, was the mysterious inter-space. Close, too, invisible in all its immensity, was another universe. An old and tottering universe from which its inhabitants had fled, a dying universe that had been sentenced to death so that a younger universe might live.
In just a few minutes now the space between the universes would begin to fill with a charge of that terrible timeless, formless energy. Slowly it would begin seeping into the two universes, slowly at first and then faster and faster, increasing their mass, dooming them to almost instant destruction.
But before that could happen, the disintegrator ray, the most terrible form of energy known to the Engineers, would blast out into that field of latent energy, would sweep outward toward that other approaching universe.
Instantly the field of energy would be turned into the terrific power of the disintegrator ray, but millions of times more powerful than the ray itself… a blinding sheet of energy that would stop at nothing, that would smash the very mold of time and space, would destroy matter and cancel other energy. And this sheet of energy would smash its way into the other universe.
And when that happened, the energy field, draining all its energy into the disintegrator blast, would be diverted from the younger universe, would turn in full force upon the one to be destroyed.