“And so?” the Master asked.
“For a thousand years,” Clem continued, “a girl in silk clothes lay on a steel table. She was cradled about the head and shoulders in a beechwood rack and fastened down by heavy leather straps. All these things I noticed when I first saw her through the globe. You begin to understand, sir? For a thousand years the energy of everything about her was emanated, but it could not escape. Entropy was there but held stagnant. Hence, when the globe was finally shattered the energy of entropy-change went forth in an overpowering wave and sought out the original atomic formation from which it had sprung, just as a river takes the shortest route to the sea. It had to do so in order to catch up on the predestined entropy intended for those particular formations.
“So, Master, steel in the Mid-City Bridge went soft because of extreme age and the strain it was taking. It affected the steel of my brake pedal also. Why? Because the steel that formed the girl’s table came from the same ores that were later used to make a bridge. Metals, like human beings, exist in groups from a parent set of ores — but the parts of the bridge made from a different set of ores were unaffected. Everything connected with the girl suddenly became a thousand years old! Beech trees shot up to a thousand years of growth because those particular trees were direct descendants of the tree from which the head cradle had been made.
“Leather disappeared because it was made from the skin of animals whose ancestors had provided the leather for the straps and the belt on the girl’s frock. Live animal ancestors also suddenly became a thousand years old. It would operate through the line of descendants and relationship each time, though there was no exact moment of dissolution which could be pinpointed, it depending on how long the energy took to level out. Hence the girl retained her clothes for quite a while before they disappeared. I understand that Guard Sixty-Seven tried to give you the girl’s clothes and found they had gone. Since he hadn’t noticed their disappearance — or rather detected a decrease in the weight of the bag — it is possible that they vanished at the very moment he tried to produce them.
“Even silkworms vanished,” Clem finished. “They were the remote ‘descendants’ of the silkworms which had created the silk for the girl’s dress. Entropy caught up, right through the line again, evolved them over a thousand years and they consequently vanished. Consider the untold millions of silkworms which must have evolved in the interval, from the original progenitors, and it will be seen that very few silkworms could escape being involved, which is why all of them vanished on the transatlantic ship. Let us hope that the entropy balance will soon be reached and the disasters besetting us will cease.”
The Master was silent for nearly three minutes when Clem had finished speaking, so much so it appeared that he had gone to sleep. Apparently such was not the case for at last he stirred. “I accept the explanation, Mister Bradley,” he said. “I have been deliberating the various scientific issues and I see nothing which is at variance with logic — at least as far as the various articles connected with this woman are concerned. As you say, let us hope that the energy will soon find its level and that our troubles may cease. I think, however, that you neglected a factor in your otherwise excellent hypothesis.”
“And what is that, sir?”
“What of the woman herself? Why has not entropy caught up with her? Since the various articles and garments connected with her have disappeared, and their entropy been transmitted down a direct descending line, is it not possible that this woman, too, will be involved?”
“That,” Clem admitted, “is a thought which has worried me quite a deal, sir, but so far nothing has happened to her.”
“That does not imply that it will not do so later. Her energy must have been given off and transmitted through—” The Master sat up abruptly. “Had she any descendants? Progeny?” he asked, his eyes sharpening.
“A son, sir.” Clem’s expression changed too as he suddenly realized the implications. “Great heavens! The deaths of cattle have proven that entropy reacts through organic bodies as it does through inorganic substances. That means that all those connected with her, in a descending line, will find entropy catching up on them!”
“Yes. And she herself will vanish,” the Master added. “She must, because, by the law of entropy, she is nearly a thousand years old! My conception of the problem is that so far this woman’s entropy has not found its level, therefore none of her descendants has been affected, or she either. But once the level is found.…”
Silence dropped, and Clem and Buck exchanged glances of dismay.
“It also depends,” the Master continued, “on whether or not her son married and had issue — and on whether they in turn also married. So far nothing has happened since no mysterious deaths have been reported anywhere. I think we cannot do better than look through the records and see if we can trace this woman and her family. Her name is — what?”
“Lucy Denby,” Clem answered, thinking, “and she was married round about 2007 to a Reginald Denby, salesman, or something.”
“I will see what I can trace.”
Obviously disturbed by this new possibility the Master reached out to a switch, and then he paused, looking at his hand. Normally it was a tanned and thin, but now it was a deathly white with the veins etched in a vivid blue tracery. He looked at his other hand sharply and found it similarly afflicted.
“Strange,” he murmured, preoccupied with this metamorphosis. “Very strange.”
Buck gripped Clem’s arm tightly, but Clem had no need of this to apprehend the sudden change that had come over the Master. His face was dissolving into a mass of seams and lines. He seemed now to be unable to move, held in the grip of the astounding metabolism suddenly coursing through him. Heat was spreading from him as his life-energy took a mighty surge forward. With the passing seconds his iron-gray hair became white: then he was bald!
“Great cosmos,” Buck whispered, transfixed.
“Must — trace — records—” the Master whispered; then his face caved in and his hands shrank to bony claws. He spoke no more words, but the look in his dying eyes was of one who tries to understand and cannot. They dimmed to burned-out coals. His skinny, fleshless frame flopped to the desk. Nor did it stay there. Vast age crumbled his bones to dust and an empty suit of clothes dropped to the floor.
“He’s — gone,” Clem gulped, his jaw lolling in stupour.
Buck could not find any words for the moment — then the private loudspeaker on the late Master’s desk suddenly burst into life.
“Emergency Communication to the Master! An unexpected wave of senility is sweeping the world! Particularly severe within a hundred miles’ radius. Isolated instances in remoter areas. Please advise.”
Clem jumped up, then in a passable imitation of the Master’s voice he said briefly: “Later!” Switching off again he turned a scared face to Buck.
“Naturally you’ve grasped what’s happened?” he asked. “Presumably the very thing the Master was discussing has happened! Lucy’s entropy is beginning to work through her line of descendants. We certainly don’t need to hunt through the records to see if her son married and had children. The Master must have been a descendant, too, however remotely. Come to think of it, in a thousand years, the descendants of one person might run into tens of thousands—”
“No might about it,” Clem snapped. “The fact that people in all walks of life have suddenly started dying is proof of it. What’s worrying me is whether we’ll find Lucy herself alive anymore! Maybe she’s vanished like the things she was wearing.”