Instinctively, he understood. The makers of the lens did not create the sidereal universe which was Rodrone’s universe, but they had meddled with it, experimenting with it as human scientists might experiment with inanimate matter. Now the makers were dead; they had been destroyed billions upon billions of years ago, but their stupendous experiments still continued blindly, meaninglessly, and the lens, an instrument of one of those experiments, had somehow found its way into the realm of space-time. Dizzyingly the imaginary carousel speeded up. Automatically Rodrone reached out for something to hang on to, but there was nothing—then his hand grabbed at something. He was holding the handle of a cupboard fitted near the control desk in the Stator’s control gallery. Everything came abruptly back into focus: the chilly gallery, the broken hum of outworn scanner equipment. The ride on the cosmic carousel was over. Rodrone’s knees felt weak and he pulled a stool under him. His experience had been no hallucination, no dream. It had possessed the texture of reality, the undeniable clarity of something that actually existed. He looked around at the lens, wondering at the instrument that could do such a thing to him; but even as he looked, the lens was gone, crumbling into a fine white powder. With a cry he fell to his knees and scooped up a handful of it. It was so fine that it barely touched him, like something halfway between water and air. And even as he touched it, the powder all dissolved, like candy floss in the mouth.
For some moments he knelt there, staring at the empty space where the lens had been. Suddenly the voices of the Stator’s crew came crackling over the communicator, echoing from different parts of the ship.
“Get a load of that!” Jermy was saying intensely and eagerly. “That’s a kick I’ll repeat any time!”
Rodrone guessed that it was the horror of it all that appealed to Jermy. Not all the deadliners had enjoyed their trip as much. Jublow was moaning painfully. Others argued in tight, frightened voices.
A far different, more collected response came from Feeldonet.
“Captain! The Barrier is down!”
“What did you say?” Rodrone snapped.
“There’s nothing holding us back any more. It shows up on the drive. We’re in free space, symmetrical in all directions—we can go as far as we like!”
It took some time for the fact to sink in. But it was a logical outcome: with the dissolution of the lens, the hermetic seal around Thiswhirl was gone too.
“Did you hear that, you trash?” Rodrone shouted exultantly. “Do you know where we’re going? Andromeda! Andromeda!”
A stunned silence followed his words. Jermy croaked, “Is it true, boss?”
“Damn you all for scum, of course it’s true!”
“Andromeda!” Jermy echoed disbelievingly.
Infectiously the others took up the cry, echoing it all around the Stator’s iron galleries.
“ANDROMEDA! ANDROMEDA!”
With a sourness he could not quite dispel, Rodrone wondered whether it was true after all that mankind was the dangerous “star virus” that the Streall believed it to be. If so, then the damage was done and it was irreparable, for all constraints on man’s actions had now been removed. The virus was about to spread to other bodies.
Silently the Stator put herself in motion to cross the immense sea between the galaxies.