And the worst of it was that a modification which stood one minute would not stand the next.
«Where are we goin’ now, boss?»
«We’re going out to the space warp that Knut found,» said Craig. «And don’t think for a minute I’ll turn around and take you back. You got yourself into this, remember.»
Rastus’ eyes batted rapidly and his tongue ran around his lips. «You said the warp, boss? Did I hear you right? The warp?»
Craig didn’t answer. He swung back to his seat, started the jumper once again.
Rastus was staring out of one of the side ports. «There’s a Candle followin’ us,» he announced. «Big blue feller. Skippin’ along right with us all the time.»
«Nothing funny in that,» said Craig. «They often follow us. Whole herds of them.»
«Only one this time,» said Rastus. «Big blue feller.»
Craig glanced at the notation of the space warp’s location. Only a few miles distant. He was almost there.
There was nothing to indicate where the warp might be, although the instruments picked it up and charted it as he drew near. Perhaps if a man stood at just the right angle he might detect a certain shimmer, a certain strangeness, as if he were looking into a wavy mirror. But otherwise there probably would be nothing pointing to its presence. Hard to know just where one stopped or started. Hard to keep from walking into one, even with instruments.
Curt shivered as he thought of the spacemen who had walked into just such warps in the early days. Daring mariners of space who had ventured to land their ships on the Sunward side, had dared to take short excursions in their old-type space suit. Most of them had died, blasted by the radiations spewed out by the Sun, literally cooked to death. Others had walked across the plain and disappeared. They had walked into the warps and disappeared as if they had melted into thin air. Although, of course, there wasn’t any air to melt into—hadn’t been for many million years.
On this world, all free elements long ago had disappeared. Those elements that remained, except possibly far underground, were locked so stubbornly in combination that it was impossible to blast them free in any appreciable quantity. That was why liquid air was carted clear from Venus.
The tracks in the dust and rubble made by Knut’s machine were plainly visible, and Craig followed them. The jumper topped a slight rise and dipped into a slight depression. And in the center of the depression was a queer shifting of light and dark, as if one were looking into a tricky mirror.
That was the space warp!
Craig glanced at the instruments and caught his breath. Here was a space warp that was really big. Still following the tracks of Knut’s machine, he crept down into the hollow, swinging closer and closer to that shifting, almost invisible blotch that marked the warp.
«Golly!» gasped Rastus, and Craig knew the Negro was beside him, for he felt his breath upon his neck.
Here Knut’s machine had stopped, and here Knut had gotten out to carry the instruments nearer, the blotchy tracks of his space suit like furrows through the powdered soil. And there he had come back. And stopped and gone forward again. And there—
Craig jerked the jumper to a halt, stared in amazement and horror through the filter shield. Then, the breath sobbing in his throat, he leaped from the seat, scrambled frantically for a space suit.
Outside the car, he approached the dark shape huddled on the ground.
Slowly he moved nearer, the hands of fear clutching at his heart. Beside the shape he stopped and looked down. Heat and radiation had gotten in their work, shriveling, blasting, desiccating—but there could be no doubt.
Staring up at him from where it lay was the dead face of Knut Anderson!
Craig straightened up and looked around. Candles danced upon the ridges, swirling and jostling, silent watchers of his grim discovery. The one lone blue Candle, bigger than the rest, had followed the machine into the hollow, was only a few rods away, rolling restlessly to and fro.
Knut had said something was funny—had shouted it, his voice raspy and battered by the screaming of powerful radiations. Or had that been Knut?
Had Knut already died when that message came through?
Craig glanced back at the sand, the blood pounding in his temples. Had the Candles been responsible for this? And if they were, why was he unmolested, with hundreds dancing on the ridge?
And if this was Knut, with dead eyes staring at the black of space, who was the other one—the one who came back?
Candles masquerading as human beings? Was that possible? Mimics the Candles were—but hardly as good as that. There was always something wrong with their mimicry—something ludicrously wrong.
He remembered now the look in the eyes of the returned Knut—that chilly, deadly look—the kind of look one sometimes sees in the eyes of ruthless men. A look that had sent cold chills chasing up his spine.
And Knut, who was no match for Creepy at checkers, but who thought he was because Creepy let him win at regular intervals, had taken six games straight.
Craig looked back at the jumper again, saw the frightened face of Rastus pressed against the filter shield. The Candles still danced upon the hills, but the big blue one was gone.
Some subtle warning, a nasty little feeling between his shoulder blades, made Craig spin around to face the warp. Just in front of the warp stood a man, and for a moment Craig stared at him, frozen, speechless, unable to move.
For the man who stood in front of him, not more than forty feet away, was Curt Craig!
Feature for feature, line for line, that man was himself. A second Curt Craig. As if he had rounded a corner and met himself coming back.
Bewilderment roared through Craig’s brain, a baffling bewilderment. He took a quick step forward, then stopped. For the bewilderment suddenly was edged with fear, a knifelike sense of danger.
The man raised a hand and beckoned, but Craig stayed rooted where he stood, tried to reason with his muddled brain. It wasn’t a reflection, for if it had been a reflection it would have shown him in a space suit, and this man stood without a space suit. And if it were a real man, it wouldn’t be standing there exposed to the madness of the Sun. Such a thing would have spelled sure and sudden death.
Forty feet away—and yet within that forty feet, perhaps very close, the power of the warp might reach out, might entangle any man who crossed that unseen deadline. The warp was moving, at a few feet an hour, and this spot where he now stood, with Knut’s dead body at his feet, had a few short hours ago been within the limit of the warp’s influence.
The man stepped forward, and as he did, Craig stepped back, his hands dropping to the gun butts. But with the guns half out he stopped, for the man had disappeared. Had simply vanished. There had been no puff of smoke, no preliminary shimmering as of matter breaking down. The man just simply wasn’t there. But in his place was the big blue Candle, rocking to and fro.
Cold sweat broke out upon Craig’s forehead and trickled down his face.
For he knew he had trodden very close to death—perhaps to something even worse than death. Wildly he swung about, raced for the puddle jumper, wrenched the door open, hurled himself at the controls.
Rastus wailed at him. «What’s the matter, boss?»
«We have to get back to the Center,» yelled Craig. «Old Creepy is back there all alone! Lord knows what has happened to him—what will happen to him.»
«But, boss,» yipped Rastus, «what’s the matter. Who was back there on the ground?»