"I do not as yet try to account for it!" Cardynge snapped. "Two very evident possibilities should already be apparent, even to your feeble brain. One, that at the moment of release your vessel happened to be situated within a fold of our own space. Two, that the collapse of the ship's force–fields always returns it to its original space, while the collapse of those of the shore station always forces it into some other space. In the latter case, it would be reasonable to suppose that the persons or beings at the other end of the tube may have suspected that we were following Kandron, and, as soon as he landed, cut off their forces deliberately to throw us out of space. They may even have learned that persons of lesser ability, so treated, never return. Do not allow yourself to be at all impressed by any of these possibilities, however, as the truth may very well lie in something altogether different. Bear it in mind that we have as yet very little data upon which to formulate any theories, and that the truth can be revealed only by a very careful, accurate, and thorough investigation. Please note also that I would surely have discovered and evaluated all these unknowns during the course of my as yet incomplete study of our own hyper–spatial tubes; that I am merely continuing here a research in which I have already made noteworthy progress."
Kinnison really gasped at that—the guy was certainly terrific! He called the chief pilot. "Go free, Hen, and start flitting for a planet—we've got to sit down somewhere before we can start back home. When you find one, land free. Stay free, and watch your Bergs—I don't have to tell you what will happen if they quit on us."
Then Thorndyke. "Verne? Break out some personal neutralizers. We've got a job of building to do—inertialess," and he explained to both men in flashing thoughts what had happened and what they had to do.
"You grasp the basic idea, Kinnison," Cardynge approved, "that it is necessary to construct a station apart from the vessel in which we propose to return to our normal environment. You err grievously, however, in your insistence ,upon the necessity of discovering a planet, satellite, asteroid, or other similar celestial body upon which to build it."
"Huh?" Kinnison demanded.
"It is eminently possible—yes, even practicable—for us to use the Dauntless as an anchorage for the tube and for us to return in the lifeboats," Cardynge pointed out.
"What? Abandon this ship? Waste all that time rebuilding all the boats?"
"It is preferable, of course, and more expeditious, to find a planet, if possible," the scientist conceded. "However, it is plain that it is in no sense necessary. Your reasoning is fallacious, your phraseology is deplorable. I am correcting you in the admittedly faint hope of teaching you scientific accuracy of thought and of statement."
"Wow! Wottaman!" Kinnison breathed to himself, as, heroically, he "skipped it".
Somewhat to Kinnison's surprise—he had more than half expected that planets would be non–existent in that space—the pilots did find a solid world upon which to land. It was a peculiar planet indeed. It did not move right, it did not look right, it did not feel right. It was waterless, airless, desolate; a senseless jumble of jagged fragments, mostly metallic. It was neither hot nor cold—indeed, it seemed to have no temperature of its own at all. There was nothing whatever right about it, Kinnison declared.
"Oh, yes, there is!" Thorndyke contradicted. 'Time is constant here, whatever its absolute rate may be, these metals are nice to work with, and some of this other stuff will make insulation. Or hadn't you thought of that? Which would be faster, cutting down an intrinsic velocity of fifteen lights to zero or building the projector out of native materials? And if you match intrinsics, what will happen when you hit our normal space again?
"Plenty, probably—uh–huh, faster to use the stuff that belongs here. Careful, though, fella!"
And care was indeed necessary; extreme care that not a particle of matter from the ship was used in the construction and that not a particle of the planet's substance by any mischance got aboard the spare–ship.
The actual work was simple enough. Cardynge knew exactly what had to be done. Thorndyke knew exactly how to do it, as he had built precisely similar generators for the experimental tubes upon Tellus. He had a staff of experts; the Dauntless carried a machine shop and equipment second to none. Raw material was abundant, and it was an easy matter to block out an inertialess room within which the projectors and motors were built. And, after they were built, they worked.
It was not the work, then, but the strain which wore Kinnison down. The constant, wearing strain of incessant vigilance to be sure that the Bergenholms and the small units of the personal neutralizes did not falter for a single instant. He did not lose a man, but again and again there flashed into his mind the ghastly picture of one of his boys colliding with the solid metal of the planet at a relative velocity fifteen times that of light! The strain of the endless checking and re–checking to make certain that there was no exchange of material, however slight, between the ship and the planet.
Above all, the strain of knowing a thing which, apparently, no one else suspected; that Cardynge, with all his mathematical knowledge, was not going to be able to find his way back! He had never spoken of this to the scientist. He did not have to. He knew that without a knowledge of the fundamental distinguishing characteristics of our normal space—a knowledge even less to be expected than that a fish should know the fundamental equations and structure of water—they never could, save by sheerest accident, return to their own space. And as Cardynge grew more and more tensely, unsocially immersed in his utterly insoluble problem, the more and more uneasy the Gray Lensman became. But this last difficulty was resolved first, and in a totally unexpected fashion.
"Ah, Kinnison of Tellus, here you are—I have been considering your case for some twenty nine of your seconds," a deep, well–remembered voice resounded within his brain.
"Mentor!" he exclaimed, and at the sheer shock of his relief he came very near indeed to fainting. "Thank Klono and Noshabkeming you found us! How did you do it? How do we get ourselves out of here?"
"Finding you was elementary," the Arisian replied, calmly.
"Since you were not in your own environment you must be elsewhere. It required but little thought to perceive what was a logical, in fact an inevitable, development. Such being the case, it needed very little additional effort to determine what had happened, and how, and why; likewise precisely where you must now be. As for departure therefrom, your mechanical preparations are both correct and adequate. I could give you the necessary information, but it is rather technically specialized and not negligible in amount; and since your brain is not of infinite capacity, it is better not to fill any part of it with mathematics for which you will have no subsequent use. Put yourself en rapport, therefore, with Sir Austin Cardynge. I will follow."
He did so, and as mind met mind there ensued a conversation whose barest essentials Kinnison could not even dimly grasp. For Cardynge, as has been said, could think in the universal language of mathematics: in the esoteric symbology which very few minds have ever been able even partially to master. The Lensman did not get it, nor any part of it; he knew only that in that to him completely meaningless gibberish the Arisian was describing to the physicist, exactly and fully, the distinguishing characteristics of a vast number of parallel and simultaneously co–existent spaces.
If that was "rather" technical stuff, the awed Lensman wondered, what would really deep stuff be like? Not that he wanted to find out! No wonder these mathematical wizards were nuts—went off the beam—he'd be pure squirrel–food if he had half that stuff in his skull!
But Sir Austin took to it like a cat lapping up cream or doing away with the canary. He brightened visibly; he swelled: and, when the Arisian had withdrawn from his mind, he preened himself and swaggered as he made meticulous adjustments of the delicate meters and controls which the technicians had already built.