"Oh–h…ah…a–hum." But only momentarily was Sir Austin taken aback. "Ah, I was right all the time!" he cackled gleefully. "I thought it was practically impossible for me to commit an error or to overlook any possibilities, and I have now proved that I did not Time, in this hyper–spatial region or condition, is intrinsically variable, and in major degree!"
"And what does that get you?" Kinnison asked, pointedly.
"Much, my impetuous youngster, much," Cardynge replied. "We observe, we note facts. From the observations and facts we theorize and we deduce; thus arriving very shortly at the true inwardness of time."
"You hope," the Lensman snorted, dubiously; and in his skepticism he was right and Sir Austin was wrong. For the actual nature and mechanism of time remained, and still constitute, a mystery, or at least an unsolved problem. The Arisians—perhaps—understand time; no other race does.
To some of the men, then, and to some of the clocks and other time– measuring devices, the time seemed—or actually was?—very long; to other "and similar beings and mechanisms it seemed—or was—short. Short or long, however, the Dauntless did not reach the Boskonian end of the hyper–spatial tube.
In mid–flight there came a crunching, twisting cloonk! and an abrupt reversal of the inexplicably horrible inter–dimensional acceleration—a deceleration as sickeningly disturbing, both physically and mentally, as the acceleration had been.
While within the confines of the hyper–spatial tube every eye of the Dauntless had been blind. To every beam upon every frequency, visible or invisible, ether– borne or carried upon the infinitely faster waves of the sub–ether, the murk was impenetrable. Every plate showed the same mind–numbing blankness; a vague, eerily–shifting, quasi–solid blanket of formless, textureless grayness. No lightness or darkness, no stars or constellation or nebulae, no friendly, deep– space blackness—nothing.
Deceleration ceased; the men felt again the wonted homeliness and comfort of normal pseudo–gravity. Simultaneously the gray smear of the visiplates faded away into commonplace areas of jetty black, pierced by the brilliantly dimensionless vari–colored points of light which were the familiar stars of their own familiar space.
But were they familiar? Was that our galaxy, or anything like it? They were not. It was not. Kinnison stared into his plate, aghast.
He would not have been surprised to have emerged into three–dimensional space anywhere within the Second Galaxy. In that case, he would have seen a Milky Way; and from its shape, apparent size, and texture he could have oriented himself fairly closely in a few minutes. But the Dauntless was not within any lenticular galaxy—nowhere was there any sign of a Milky Way!
He would not have been really surprised to have found himself and his ship out in open inter–galactic space. In that case he would have seen a great deal of dead–black emptiness, blotched with lenticular bodies which were in fact galaxies. Orientation would then have been more difficult; but, with the aid of the Patrol charts, it could have been accomplished. But here there were no galaxies—no nebulae of any kind!
18: Prime Minister Fossten
Here, upon a background of a blackness so intense as to be obviously barren of nebular material, there lay a multitude of blazingly resplendent stars—and nothing except stars. A few hundred were of a visual magnitude of about minus three. Approximately the same number were of minus two or thereabouts, and so on down; but there did not seem to be a star or other celestial object in that starkly incredible sky of an apparent magnitude greater than about plus four.
"What do you make "of this, Sir Austin?" Kinnison asked, quietly. "It's got me stopped like a traffic light."
The mathematician ran toward him and the Lensman stared. He had never known Cardynge to hurry—in fact, he was not really running now. He was walking, even though his legs were fairly twinkling in their rapidity of motion. As he approached Kinnison his pace gradually slowed to normal.
"Oh—time must be cock–eyed here, too," the Lensman observed. "Look over there—see how fast those fellows are moving, and how slow those others over that way are?"
"Ah, yes. Interesting—intensely interesting. Truly, a most remarkable and intriguing phenomenon," the fascinated mathematician enthused.
"But that wasn't what I meant. Swing this plate—it's on visual—around outside, so as to get the star aspect and distribution. What do you think of it?"
"Peculiar—I might almost say unique," the scientist concluded, after his survey. "Not at all like any normal configuration or arrangement with which I am familiar. We could perhaps speculate, but would it not be preferable to secure data first? Say by approaching a solar system and conducting systematic investigations?"
"Uh–huh," and again Kinnison stared at the wispy little physicist in surprise. Here was a man! "You're certainly something to tie to, ace, do you know it?" he asked, admiringly. Then, as Cardynge gazed at him questioningly, uncomprehendingly:
"Skip it. Can you feel my thought, Henderson?"
"Yes."
"Shoot us across to one of those nearer stars, stop, and go inert.""
"QX, chief." The pilot obeyed.
And in the instant of inerting, the visiplate into which the two men stared went black. The thousands of stars studding the sky a moment before had disappeared as though they had never been.
"Why…what…How in all the yellow hells of space can that happen?" Kinnison blurted.
Without a word Cardynge reached out and snapped the plate's receiver over from "visual" to "ultra", whereupon the stars reappeared as suddenly as they had vanished.
"Something's screwy somewhere!" the Lensman protested. "We can't have an inert velocity greater than that of light—it's impossible!"
"Few things, if any, can be said definitely to be impossible; and everything is relative, not absolute," the old scientist declared, pompously. "This space, for instance. You have not yet perceived, I see, even that you are not in the same three–dimensional space in which we have heretofore existed."
Kinnison gulped. He was going to protest about that, too, but in the face of Cardynge's unperturbed acceptance of the fact he did not quite dare to say what he had in mind.
"That is better," the old man declaimed. "Do not get excited—to do so dulls the mind. Take nothing for granted, do not jump at conclusions—to commit either of those errors will operate powerfully against success. Working hypotheses, young man, must be based upon accurately determined facts; not upon mere guesses, superstitions, or figments of personal prejudices."
"Bub—bub—but…QX—skip it!" Nine–tenths of the Dauntless" crew would have gone out of control at the impact of the knowledge of what had happened; even Kinnison's powerful mind was shaken. Cardynge, however, was—not seemed to be, but actually was—as calm and as self–contained as though he were in his own quiet study. "Explain it to me, will you please, in words of as nearly one syllable as possible?"
"Our looser thinkers have for centuries speculated upon the possibility of an entire series of different spaces existing simultaneously, side by side in a hypothetical hyper–continuum. I have never indulged in such time–wasting; but now that actual corroborative data have become available, I regard it as a highly fruitful field of investigation. Two extremely significant facts have already become apparent; the variability of time and the non–applicability of our so–called 'laws' of motion. Different spaces, different laws, it would seem."
"But when we cut our generators in that other tube we emerged into our own space," Kinnison argued. "How do you account for that?"