Staggering under the onrush of such a fierce storm of energy, the old universe would start contracting. Its mass would build up, faster and faster, as the fifth-dimensional energy, riding on the beams of the disintegrator guns, hurled itself into its space-time frame.
Gary wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
That was the way Caroline and the Engineer had figured it out. He hoped that it would work. And yet it seemed impossible that a tiny ship, two tiny guns manned by the puny members of the human race, could utterly annihilate a universe, an unimaginably massive space-time matrix.
Yet he had seen the beam of a tiny flashlight, crystalizing the energy of the eternal dimension, blast out of existence, in the twinkling of an eye, a mighty fleet of warships protected by heavy screens, armored against vicious bombs, impregnable to anything… to anything except the flashlight in the hands of a wisp of a girl.
Remembering that, it was easier to believe that the disintegrators, crystalizing a much vaster field of energy, might accomplish the destruction of a universe. For it wasn't the guns themselves that would do the job, but the direction of all the energy into the other universe, energy rising on the million-mile front set up by the fanning guns.
"The field is building up," said Caroline. "Be ready." Gary grinned at her.
"We'll fire when we see the whites of their eyes," he said.
He racked his brain for the origin of that sentence. Something out of history. Something out of the dim old legends of the past. A folk tale of some mighty battle of the ancient days.
He shrugged his shoulders. The story, whatever it might be, probably wasn't true, anyhow. So few of the ancient legends were. Just another story to be told of a black night in the chimney corner when the wind howled around the eaves and the rain dripped on the roof.
His eyes went to the port again, stared out into the misty blue, the blue that seemed to throb with vibrant life.
They had to wait. Wait until the energy had built up to a point where it would be effective. But not too long. For if they waited too long, it might pour into their own universe and wipe them out.
"Get ready," thundered Kingsley, and Gary's hand went out to the switch that would loosen the blast of the disintegrator. His fingers gripped the switch tightly, tensed, ready for action.
"Give it to 'em," Kingsley roared, and Gary snapped the switch.
With both hands he swung the swivel back and forth, back and forth. Beside him, he knew, Herb was doing the same.
Outside the port blossomed a maelstrom of fiery light, a blinding, vicious flare of light that seemed to leap and writhe and then become a solid sheet of flame. A solid sheet of flame that drove on and on, leaping outward, bringing doom to a worn-out universe.
It was over in just a few seconds… a few seconds during which an inferno of energy was turned loose to rage between two universes.
Then the misty blue filled the port again and the ship was bucking, tossed about like a chip in heavy seas, twisted and dashed about by the broken lines of force that still heaved and quivered under the backlash of the titanic forces which a moment before bad filled the inter-space.
Gary turned in his seat, saw that Caroline and the Engineer were bent over the detector dial, watching it intently.
Kingsley, looking over the Engineer's shoulder, was muttering: "No sign. No sign of energy.”
That meant, then, that the other universe was already contracting, was rushing backward to a new beginning… no longer a menace.
Gary patted the gun. It and Man's ingenuity had turned the trick. Mere Man had destroyed one universe, but had saved another. It seemed too utterly fantastic to be true.
He looked around the control room. Tommy at the controls. Herb at the second gun. The other three watching the energy detector. Everything was familiar. Nothing was any different than it was before. All commonplace and ordinary.
And yet, for the first time, tiny beings spawned within the universe had taken firm hold of the universe's destiny. Henceforward Man and his little compatriots throughout the vast gulfs of space would no longer be mere pawns in the grim tide of cosmic forces. Henceforward life would rule these forces, bend them to its will, put them to work, change them, shift them about.
Life was an accident. There was little doubt of that. Something that wasn't exactly planned. Something that had crept in, like a malignant disease in the ordered mechanism of the universe. The universe was hostile to life.
The depths of space were too cold for life, most of the condensed matter too hot for life, space was traversed by radiations inimical to life. But life was triumphant. In the end, the universe would not destroy it… it would rule the universe.
His mind went back to the day Herb had sighted that tiny flash of reflected light in the telescopic screen, back to the finding of the girl in the space shell. And before him seemed to unreel the chain of events that had led up to this moment. If Caroline Martin had not been condemned to space, if she had not known the secret of suspended animation, if that suspended animation had not failed to suspend thought, if Herb had not seen the flash that revealed the presence of the shell, if he, himself, had been unable to revive the girl, if Kingsley had not been curious about why cosmic rays should form a definite pattern…
And in that chain of happenings he seemed to see the hand of something greater than just happenstance. What was it the old man back on Old Earth had said? Something about a great dreamer creating stages and peopling them with actors.
"No energy indications," said the Engineer. "We have definitely ended the menace. The other universe has contracted beyond the danger point. We are saved. I am so very happy.”
He faced them. "And so very grateful, too," he said. "Forget it," said Herb. "It was our neck as well as yours.”
Chapter Eighteen
Herb polished the last chicken bone methodically and sighed. "That's the best meal I ever ate," he said.
They sat at the table in the apartment the Engineers had arranged for them.
It had escaped the general destruction of the Hellhound attack, although the tower above it had been obliterated by a hydrogen bomb.
Gary filled his wineglass again and leaned back in his chair.
"I guess our job is done here," he said. "Maybe we'll be going home in just a little while.”
"Home?" asked Caroline. "You mean the Earth?”
Gary nodded.
"I have almost forgotten the Earth," she said. "It has been so long since I have seen the Earth. I suppose it has changed a great deal since I saw it last.”
"Perhaps it has," Gary told her, "although there are some things that never change. The smell of fresh-plowed fields and the scent of hayfields at harvest time and the beauty of trees against the skyline at evening.”
"Just a poet," said Herb. "Just a blasted poet.”
"Maybe there will be things I won't recognize," said Caroline. "Things that will be so different.”
"I'll show you the Earth," said Gary. "I'll set you straight on everything.”
"What bothers me," declared Kingsley, "are those people from the other universe. It's just like letting undesirable elements come in under our immigration schedule on Earth. You can't tell what sort of people they are.
They might be life forms that are inimical to us.”
"Or," suggested Caroline, "they might be possessors of great scientific accomplishments and a higher culture. They might add much to this universe.”
"There isn't much danger from them," said Gary. "The Engineers are taking care of them. They're keeping them cooped up in the hypersphere they used to cross interspace until suitable places for their settlement can be found. The Engineers will keep an eye on them.”
Metallic feet grated on the floor and Engineer 1824 came across the room toward the table.