In this mood, the solidity of everything vanished for Brian. He even doubted the reality of matter. After all, how could substantiality be proved? Only by opposing one mass by another mass. A body literally did not exist until it interacted with another body.
The whole world of matter subsisted only relatively, sustaining itself by means of internal supports. It was a system of logic, consistent with itself but meaningless elsewhere.
Seen from outside, none of it existed.
Though on a grand scale, it was rather like the artificial society he saw disporting around him, whose members subsidised one another in the superficiality of their attitudes, opinions and chatter. It had no external existence. Take away that mutual support, and the fabric of their lives would vanish.
These thoughts and ideas obsessed Brian so much that, from an ordinary point of view, he doubted if he could be considered sane. But he wouldn’t let go of it. He kept reminding himself of the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Heidegger’s question: “Why does anything exist, and not just nothing?” This summed up exactly his own thoughts about the matter.
Under his feet, over his head, on either side of him, was absolute nothing.
None of these philosophisings were overtly connected with his desire to look outside. As far as that went, he simply had an itch to do it. The very fact that he was forbidden convinced him that it was worthwhile. So without theorising about it, he wanted to go to work with that wrench.
They left the cinema, but didn’t go immediately back to the lounge. Brian kept Mercer talking, and headed him casually in the other direction, walking aimlessly as their fashion had been years ago.
Once they passed a Scientocrat officer. Brian felt the guilty weight of the wrench which he had hung inside his jacket.
After about half an hour he stopped. “Do you know where you are?” he said.
Mercer looked around him, recalling the design of the ship which he had memorised. The corridor was smaller than average, deserted, and without doors. He had automatically noticed the change in the paint a few hundred feet back, when the corridor had switched from the luxurious to the utilitarian.
“We must be near the periphery,” he said uneasily.
Brian went a little further and motioned him to follow with a wave of his hand. “Come on.”
Mercer became nervous. “Count me out,” he said, shaking his head.
“I just want to show you something.”
Hesitantly, Mercer followed until they came to the final turning. Brian waited for him to catch up.
“There it is, look,” he whispered. “Now just stand here and tell me if anybody comes.”
Mercer backed away. “Oh, no!”
Brian chuckled light-heartedly and touched his elbow. “For the good of science, eh, old man?” He proceeded to the end of the tunnel and left Mercer standing there.
Mercer felt ridiculous. He was being forced willy-nilly into passive assistance!
At the cover-plate, Brian measured the wrench against the first bolt, adjusted the grip, and applied leverage. Reluctantly, after a lot of effort, the bolt began to turn. Paint cracked and flaked.
The first bolt came out.
Calmly he went to work on the others. It took him about ten minutes to get them all out. At the end of that time the plate was held in place only by the layers of paint joining it to the wall.
Swiftly he used a pocket-knife to cut through the paint on the perimeter of the cover, until the plate moved in his hands.
Carefully, he eased it away.
Behind it was a recess about three feet deep, ending in a perfectly transparent blister which apparently projected above the hull. He gripped the edge of the opening.
All his guesses had been correct.
The first hint of that darkness sent a shudder throughout his whole body. Awkwardly he pulled himself into the recess and crawled towards the window blister, until he was up against the cool, nearly invisible plastic.
He looked into space.
The first direction he looked, he saw the stunning expanse of the galactic spiral edge-on, sheer coruscations of immense light. He saw the size of it, as clearly as he could have seen the size of his own hand. The spread of stars just went up, and up, and up. Here already was something so vast as to be incommensurable even with the Earth itself, so vast as to be senseless. His consciousness reeled in the first two seconds he looked at it. But even that was not what he had come for, and he turned his head to look the other way.
This direction lay beyond the galaxy. There was nothing there forever, except a few dim glimmers of other galaxies which weren’t noticed, except to accentuate the void and endlessness.
He saw at last what had so long been the subject of his search: limitless emptiness.
As he gazed, all his attention was swept into the vacuum of the awful view. From that moment he was doomed. His whole being was drawn into the empty vastness by forced attention raised to the nth degree.
The first stage was catatonia; even that was brief. His personality was being sucked into galactic space. Within a minute, his body died.
Mercer waited fretfully at the turning of the corridor. Brian had been gone some time.
He peeped along the tunnel to where the aperture was. He could see Brian’s legs poking out. For several minutes, his friend had been completely motionless and silent.
“Brian,” he called softly. “How much longer?”
No answer.
“Brian.” Then loudly, “Brian!”
Still no response. Mercer sensed that something was wrong. He stepped quickly up the tunnel and touched Brian’s leg.
It shifted limply under the pressure of his hand, and Brian made no sign that he had felt the touch. Mercer caught his breath, and wondered what to do.
Just a few more inches, and he too would have been able to peer along the recess, and out into space. But he didn’t. He backed away, in spite of the urge tugging at his mind. Soon he was running—down the tunnels, through the corridors, looking frantically for a Scientocrat officer. When he found one, he blurted out his story.
Within five minutes, he was leading a rescue party in the direction of the aperture. At least, in his ignorance he thought it was a rescue party.
He was quite mistaken.
The way the operation was tackled exploded one theory of Brian’s. Scientocrats were not allowed to look into space. The officers who removed his body from the recess and bolted the cover back in place wore all-metal helmets with television eyes which connected to a screen inside. The body was quite dead.
Mercer watched in a state of horror from the turning of the corridor. Disconsolately he followed in the wake of the stretcher as Brian’s corpse was carried away.
Head down, with his hands folded on his desk, Captain Brode meditated sombrely. He was thinking of what his passenger Brian Denver had done. He was thinking of why he had done it.
Like any other ship’s captain, he couldn’t help having occasional thoughts of out there. No Scientocrat was ever more aware of how little man could do, for all his science, to hold his own when faced with the naked universe.
More than ever he felt the abstraction, the separation from the common folk which Scientocratic Communism had thrust upon him; a separation which he sometimes regretted, but now that it was done could not avoid.
He shook his head. Just what had the experience been like for his dead passenger?
The face of God is like unto a countenance vast and terrible.
Someone knocked on the door of his office. He pressed a button, and the panel slid open.
Mercer Stone stood on the threshold.
“Come in, Mr Stone,” he said without preamble. “Please sit down.”