Title: The long way back
Author: Barrett, John
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The long way back" ***


                           The Long Way Back

                            By JOHN BARRETT

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Thrilling Wonder Stories February 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Brainard died on the third day after they set out from the wreck. Carl
Reese and the girl, Thela Brill, scraped a grave in the sand with flat
pieces of rock, and laid him in it on the litter they had used to carry
him. They covered it with rocks to keep the sand wolves out, and set
off again across the desert.

That day they did not go far. The sun came down through the cloudless
Martian sky like a hammer. Every hour or so they had to creep into the
shadow of the rocks and rest. It was about mid-afternoon when the girl
collapsed. Carl carried her to one of the shallow caves in the cliffs
that were growing more numerous, and gave her the water flask to sip.

Her blond hair was grayed with powdery sand, and Carl saw there were
hollows now under her reddened eyes, but even with the strain of
fatigue, her clean-featured face was beautiful. He watched her slender
throat as she sipped the water.

He thought, She can't stand much more of this. She's not built for it.

The flask was still heavy when she handed it back.

"You'll need more than that to keep you going till sundown," he said.

She shook her head. "You better go on alone. It's getting so I can't
see very well."

Carl Reese looked out at the crumbling rock and sand. It was not the
heat that got you. The middle of this desert was no warmer than a cool
day back on Earth. But the sun, pounding down through the thin air
dehydrated you and did funny things to your brain. And if you stood up
under that, the glittering sand drove you blind.

"We might as well stay here for the night," he said. "It's as good a
place as any."

"How much water is there left?" she asked.

"There's a quart in the other flask," he said. He knew there was hardly
a pint, but if he had said so, she wouldn't take any more.

She leaned back against the rock, and squinted at the shimmering
wasteland. "Do you think Brainard really saw a ship?" she asked.

"Of course he did. Brainard wouldn't lie about a thing like that."

"How could he see a ship on the ground when we were falling at six
hundred miles an hour?"

"He could see the sun flash on the metal," Carl said.

       *       *       *       *       *

She pushed the grayed curls back from her cheek. "But if there was a
ship we should have found it by now."

"Not necessarily," Carl said. "We haven't been traveling very fast."

The girl looked at her hand that was covered with gray dust from her
hair. "I'm a mess," she said.

"You ought to try and sleep a little," Carl said. "You were taking care
of Brainard all last night."

"No, I'm not sleepy."

Carl sat there watching her. In a few minutes he saw her eyes close and
her head droop forward on her knees. She did not wake up when he laid
her down at the back of the cave and shoved his jacket under her head.

When the sun sank and the chill began to make him shiver, Carl went
outside to look for fuel. As usual there were no plants, not even a
blade of dried grass, but in the face of a nearby cliff he found
again a ledge of coal. At least, he thought, the desert furnishes us
one thing, and it keeps us from turning to ice in the night.

He carried back an armful, and followed the procedure of the night
before, breaking the lumps into little pieces, and grinding a few of
them into a black powder that would burst into flame with a second shot
from the heat gun.

When the fire was going, he gathered enough coal to last through the
night, and sat down to doze away the hours.

Nights were the worst. In the day-time there was always the next patch
of shade to be reached, or you had the compass to check. Even the job
of putting one foot ahead of the other was something to concentrate
on. At nights, with only the flames of the fire, and the moan of the
wind in the rocks, your mind wandered, and once more you were streaking
through space in an Interplanetary Patrol ship with home port on Earth
only twenty hours away.

You were in the pilot's seat pointing out interesting landmarks on the
planet Mars to the pretty, blond girl from cabin three who was standing
beside you. And you were wishing that her smile and good humor meant
something personal, knowing all the time that it was only because she
and you and the five men in the main cabin had uncovered information
that was going to stop a threatened invasion of Earth by the little men
of Jupiter. And then the dream suddenly turned horrible as the ship was
caught in an invisible net that jammed the controls under your hands,
and hurled you down upon the face of the Red Planet.

Carl woke up sweating, his fists clenched, his arms aching from the
fight with a phantom rudder lever.

The flames had dwindled to red coals. He saw the girl was shivering in
her sleep. He built up the fire and lifted her closer. She opened her
eyes.

"I was dreaming I was still working in the consular office," she said
vaguely. "And the director told me to put a note on the bulletin board
informing the employees that we were about to enter the one hundred and
forty-third Ice Age."

"The sun will be up in an hour," he said.

They sat watching the rocks and the cliffs take shape in the half light
of dawn.

"Sometimes I wish you weren't such a good pilot," she said wearily.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the way you pulled the ship out of that dive so that only four
people were killed, instead of seven."

Carl stared into the fire. If we don't find something today, he
thought, she'll crack up.

He handed the water flask to her. She shook her head.

"Take some," he said sternly. "You've only had a couple of swallows
since yesterday noon."

"How much have you had?" she asked.

"I've had my share," he said. "I feel pretty good."

"You're a liar," she said evenly. "You haven't had any."

       *       *       *       *       *

Carl swore to himself. What could you do? You couldn't hit her over the
head, and force it down her throat when she was unconscious.

Outside the rocks changed from deep rose to light pink and then to
glaring yellow. Already the sand was beginning to sparkle.

"If we do find that ship, what good will it do?" she asked. "It'll be a
wreck like ours was--only worse."

"Brainard said he thought it wasn't wrecked."

She covered her eyes from the glare of the sand. "To me that doesn't
make sense," she said. "Those fiends from Jupiter aren't stupid. They'd
know that if they let anyone get through their electronic beam net from
either side, the cat would be out of the bag."

"But the last news report we received before we hit the net had an
item in it announcing Dekmar had just landed on Mars with his new,
experimental ship."

"Dekmar has a reputation as a crackpot. Maybe he was transmitting from
space somewhere near earth. With him it might have been some sort of a
publicity stunt."

"I think you've got the wrong idea about Dekmar," Carl said. "He's a
crackpot in some ways. Lots of bright people are, but he's sincere. If
he said he was broadcasting from the Lusarian Desert on Mars, that's
where he was."

"Then why didn't he say something about the net?"

"They said his broadcast was cut off right after it started."

"If he was smart enough to get a ship through the net, why couldn't he
get a visaphone signal through it?"

Carl felt the anger swell up in his throat. He stood up. "All right
then. Have it your way. It was all a hoax, and Brainard didn't see a
ship, and maybe we're going to fry out here in this desert. What of it?
Is it a crime to be an optimist? Just because--" He stopped. She was
sobbing.

"I'm sorry," he said gently. He thought, It's beginning to get me, too.

She stood up slowly and brushed the sand from her clothes. "No, you're
right," she said. "I don't know why I talk like that. I guess I just
want you to argue against me. When you tell me I'm wrong, it makes me
feel better."

Carl rubbed his prickly chin. She was sure a hard one to figure out.
"We better get moving," he said, "before it gets too bright." He
started to give her the water flask, and then saw she was going to balk
again. He took two swallows himself and handed it to her. She took two
swallows, also.

They made good time for the first two hours. After that the sun was
torture. By midmorning they were forced into the shade again. Carl felt
his leg muscles begin to quiver as he eased himself back against the
rocks. He looked at the girl and saw that her face was white.

"You lie down for a while," he said. "I'm going to climb this rock pile
and look around." He got up.

"I'll go with you," she said. "Just let me rest a few minutes."

"You're too tired," Carl said.

"I'll be all right in a few minutes."

They rested for a half hour, and then the girl followed him up through
the jagged boulders. He kept looking back, waiting for her to say
she had had enough. She followed him silently. Her finger tips were
bleeding, and there was a long red scrape on her calf. It took twenty
minutes to reach the flat top.

Carl stood up shakily and looked around. The desert stretched for
miles, a waste of rock and sand, shimmering under the wavering air. He
looked west and saw that their way would soon be blocked by deep, sheer
canyons.

       *       *       *       *       *

He faced the southwest, and something bright made him blink. He opened
his eyes wide. On a low mesa-like outcropping near the edge of one of
the canyons lay a rocket ship. The metal was smooth and unscarred. It
rested there as if it had been landed gently.

"I can see it," he told the girl. "It's about three miles away." He
leaned down and helped her up beside him.

"Fire your gun at a rock," the girl said. "If there's anyone aboard,
he'll hear the explosion."

Carl took out his heat pistol and aimed at a large flat rock near the
base of the pile. A long blue flame speared out. Carl kept his finger
on the trigger, and the rock suddenly exploded with an ear-shattering
crack. They looked toward the ship. There was no sign of a response.

The walk across the last stretch of sand seemed endless. There was no
chance to stop or rest. The sun drove them on. Carl thought, If there's
no water aboard her we're finished. Fifty feet from the big hull he
stopped.

"Dekmar!" he called out.

The metal rang to his voice. In the canyon beyond he heard a tiny rock
slide rattle into nothingness.

"Maybe it's not Dekmar's ship," the girl said. "Maybe it's been here
for years."

"It's Dekmar's ship, all right," Carl said. "I can tell by those ridges
running down the side of the hull. I happened to be at the factory one
day last spring when he was having them put on."

They walked around behind the tail pipes and found the hatch in the
other side. It was partly open. Carl started toward it, but the girl
grabbed his arm.

"What's that?" She was pointing to a wide trailing furrow in the sand
by the hatch.

Carl felt a prickling sensation along his spine. "I don't know," he
said. "It looks like the track of some animal." He swung open the door.
"Whatever it is we've got to get in out of this sun." He stepped over
the high threshold.

The inside of the ship, protected by the heavy insulation in the hull,
was cold. Carl blinked into the darkness and yelled out, "Dekmar!"

There was no answer. He began rolling back some of the shutters
covering the ports.

The girl came up beside him. "There's a light in one of the forward
cabins."

Carl looked down the alleyway and saw a small light burning over a
desk. They walked cautiously toward it, and came out into the control
room near the nose of the ship. The light threw long shadows over a big
panel of levers and dials. In one corner of the panel three meters were
glowing red.

"His visaphone set is still on," Carl said. "He must have been
interrupted while he was broadcasting." He stepped toward the panel and
almost fell over a chair lying on the floor. He picked it up and saw
the back of it was splintered. He glanced quickly around the cabin. On
a table by the control panel was a small metal box. The lever on the
side of it was almost twisted off. Then he saw the door hanging crazily
by one hinge.

"It looks like there's been a fight," he said. He found a switch and
turned on the lights and heat all over the ship. Walking back along the
alleyway, he saw that the bulkheads had long scratches in them, and two
flush lights overhead had been smashed.

He reached the hatch and stepped down to follow the trail in the sand.
It led to the cliff edge. He was bending down, trying to make sense out
of the furrow when he heard the girl scream.

       *       *       *       *       *

Looking up, he saw her standing in the hatchway. She was staring wildly
behind him. He did not wait to look around. He ran to the ship, jumped
inside and yanked the door to. At the same instant something hissed
through the air and whammed down across the hull. Carl bolted the hatch.

"What is it?"

"A snake." The girl's voice was faint.

Carl looked out the port and his stomach seemed to turn over. The snake
had a body as thick as a big tree, and a wide, plow-shaped head. It
thrashed at the hull. Carl winced as its teeth scraped across the metal
surface.

"Well, we know what happened to Dekmar," he said. "He must have left
the hatch open while he was using the visaphone and the thing got him."

The girl was swaying on her feet. Carl caught her as her knees buckled.
He found a cabin with a couch and then hunted for the ship's stores.
There was water, gallons of it, and he found some biscuits. For the
next half hour they sat in the cabin sipping water and gnawing at the
biscuits. The girl kept looking out of the port.

"How could anything as big as that live out here?" she asked. "There's
so little food, so little water."

"I've heard reports of these snakes in the Lusarian desert," Carl said.
"The biologists say they're a hangover from an old type of animal.
They don't have a carbon system metabolism. Their chemical system is
based on silicon, and they can grind up pebbles and small boulders and
get nourishment out of them. They have teeth like rock crushers."

"Rock crushers." The girl shuddered.

Carl stood up. "Get your mind off it," he said. "See if you can find us
something a little more substantial to eat. I'm going to look over the
ship and see if I can figure out how to operate it."

He was still checking instruments when the girl came to the door of the
control room twenty minutes later.

"Well?"

"I think I can run it," Carl said. "Everything seems to be standard
except for one thing." He pointed to the square box on the table by the
panel. "There's a mess of tubes and coils in there that don't make any
sense. They must be important. They're connected by wires to the cables
that run down the ridges in the hull."

"If it doesn't have anything to do with the controls, why can't you
just forget about it," the girl said.

Carl frowned at the box. Above the twisted lever was the word
_Reduction_. There was an arrow showing which direction the lever
should be moved.

"I found something to eat," the girl said.

They walked back to the cabin that had evidently been made for a small
dining room. The girl sat down opposite him and Carl suddenly stiffened
in his chair. She was transformed. Her hair was soft and shiny again.
The gray dust was gone from her skin. She had found some silky green
cloth and made an impromptu skirt and a cross hatch halter above. He
looked down at his torn clothes, felt the gritty powder on his arms and
legs.

She laughed. "It's at the end of the hall," she said.

The shower was warm and there was soap that smelled like spices. As
Carl rubbed himself dry on the big yellow towel, he looked around at
the soft green and black tiles and thought, If this is the life of a
crackpot, I'm all for it.

The meal and the sight of the girl opposite did something to him. When
he walked back to the control cabin he was whistling. The girl came and
stood in the doorway.

"Are you going to try and get through the net?" she asked in a nervous
voice.

"Now don't get worried," he said. "If Dekmar got through, the ship must
have some protection around the hull."

       *       *       *       *       *

He started up the rockets and boosted the ship gently off the sand.
After two wide circles over the desert to get the feel of the controls,
he pointed her up and turned on the power. The girl moved over into
the acceleration seat. Out of the corner of his eye Carl saw her strap
herself in. She gripped the arms tightly. Her face was pale.

The net was a thousand miles up. When the altimeter showed eight
hundred miles, Carl slowed down and felt his way along. At nine hundred
the controls began to drag. He shut off the power and the ship dropped
back. The controls were freed.

He tried it again, nosing up slowly. This time the levers almost jammed
before he could shut off the power. The ship fell, whirling and looping
crazily. It dropped five hundred miles before he could pull it out.
Carl was sweating when he brought it down gently on the desert.

"Let's not try that again," the girl said.

Carl stared out at the sky. "I see how they're doing it," he said.
"They have a power plant sustained on an antigravity ray somewhere
above the Rapathian Mountains, and it shoots out a beam shaped like an
umbrella clear across the solar system." He swung around to the control
panel. "Still, Dekmar got through." He reached across and fingered the
dial of the little box on the table.

"Do you think we ought to fool with that?" the girl asked.

"We can't stay out on this desert forever, can we? Besides, if we
don't get that information back to the home government offices pretty
soon, it'll be too late." He found a switch at the back of the box and
pressed it. A strange throbbing ran through the ship. Carl moved the
twisted lever gingerly in the direction of the arrow. Sparks shot out
of the loose contact points and the throbbing speeded up.

The girl cried out. "Look! The rocks are changing."

Carl spun around in the chair. For a second he thought his eyes had
gone bad. The rocks outside the port were swelling up out of the desert
like balloons. He realized what it was.

"Reduction! Of course! It's not the rocks. It's us. We're getting
smaller."

Outside the port little pebbles were expanding into gigantic,
rough-hewn boulders.

"But I don't feel any different," the girl said.

"Of course not." Carl had to raise his voice above the throb of the
Reducer. "Everything inside the ship gets smaller proportionately. The
ridges on the outside of the hull must create a field." He turned back
to the panel. "And I've got a hunch this is going to get us through the
net."

He leaned over to the table and moved the lever down another notch. The
girl came over beside him.

"Look," Carl said. "The net acts on big things. If we were reduced to
the size of bacteria, there wouldn't be enough power concentrated in
one spot to affect the controls. We could slip through."

The rocket rolled suddenly as the flat sand surface under it became an
uneven plain of craggy rock. Carl turned on the keel jets and lifted
the ship clear. He looked out at the faces of sand grains that had
expanded to glassy mirror-like sheets. The ship's about two inches
long, he thought. His stomach felt as if it had a lead ball in it. He
tried the controls. The ship responded perfectly.

"But we can't keep getting smaller," the girl said. "You just can't
keep concentrating a thing."

"Now take it easy," Carl said. "Evidently there's some sort of a mass
dissipater connected with this. I don't know how it works, but Dekmar
must have known what he was doing."

       *       *       *       *       *

With a jerk, he started the tail jets and the ship roared forward and
upward. The air was no longer clear. It was filled with hundreds of
little particles that bumped gently against the hull. The girl started
back when one touched the port.

"Dust particles," Carl said. "At our size they look big."

He turned on full power. The ship spurted upward through a gray storm.
The dust, Carl saw, was not impeding their progress. The particles
touched the hull and bounced away. He set a course for Earth and turned
on the interplanetary drive. At this size they would need speed to get
anywhere.

With his hands still on the controls he turned to the girl. "Move it
back to zero," he said, jerking his head toward the box on the table,
"but don't shut off the switch. I don't want to take any chances of the
ship going back to its original size."

The girl shoved back the lever slowly. The throbbing noise sank to a
low surging sound.

"The lever's loose," she said.

"Just be careful with it."

She came back to the port. "The air's clear now."

"I think that means we're in the beam," Carl said. "Ionized air would
dispel the particles." He felt the ship buck slightly. Through the port
he could see flashes of blue light crackling along the hull. He jiggled
the controls. They were a little tight, but they weren't jammed.
Suddenly he felt them come free. At the same moment something bumped
the hull.

"It's a dust particle," the girl said. She pressed her face against the
port, staring forward. "It's as big as a house."

Carl laughed. "We're through." He checked the course to make sure it
was set for Earth, locked the controls, and stepped over to push off
the Reducer switch.

Afterwards he thought that his elbow must have hit the lever as he
reached for the switch. It happened too fast to be sure. He was aware
only of the blinding blue flash and the jerking contraction of his
muscles.

When he came to the girl was kneeling over him, wiping his face with
something wet and cold. His ears were aching with the throbbing scream
coming from the reducer. The lever to it was lying on the floor.

"How long have I been out?" He had to yell to make himself heard.

"About fifteen minutes."

He started to get up and pain like a knife stab shot through his skull.
He eased back and felt his head.

"You hit a ledge on the bulkhead," she shouted. "I bandaged it. I tried
artificial respiration, ammonia, everything. I thought you'd never come
to."

He shook his head and stared at the table. Suddenly he began to laugh.
"Automatic control," he yelled, pointing to the letters that were
flashing on and off. "It says automatic control. What a joke. There
isn't any control."

He saw the girl watching him, saw the fear in her eyes, the tight line
of her lips. It sobered him instantly. He struggled to his feet. "Let's
get out of this racket," he yelled.

They crossed the alleyway to a little cabin, and Carl closed the
airtight door. The reducer was still screaming, but it sounded far
away. Carl leaned against the door, listening. It was like a siren out
of control, climbing, climbing.

"I've got to stop that thing somehow," he said.

"You can't get near it," the girl said. "I tried once myself when you
were lying on the floor. I touched the table and the shock almost
jerked my arm off."

"But can't you see? I've got to stop it. If I don't we'll shrink. We'll
shrink to the size of a molecule, an atom, an electron, and then--Well,
there isn't anything smaller. We'll disintegrate into a quantum of
energy, or something."

"Wait!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Carl took his hand off the door latch and turned around.

"All right, then," she said quietly. "Let it happen that way. I'd
rather have it like that than seeing you on the floor again, blue and
not breathing."

Carl looked at her eyes that were calm now and steady. He thought, And
I was scared to death she was going to crack up.

He said, "I'm going to try and cut the wires to the thing, anyway. If
we can shut off the current supply, it'll stop." He stepped out into
the screeching din of the alleyway.

They found a small torch in the ship's stores and Carl tried cutting
the metal bulkhead on the outside of the control cabin where he
calculated the current supply would run. The metal was hard and the
torch cut slowly. After ten minutes he pushed up his mask and took a
breather. The bulkhead was hardly marked. Carl tapped it.

"Must be another of Dekmar's inventions," he yelled at the girl. He put
down the mask and tried again. Finally he gave up and shut the torch
off.

He walked to the doorway of the control room. He took out his heat
gun and aimed it at the box. The blue spear of flame did not reach
it. It stopped short about a foot away, and splattered as if it were
ricocheting against something hard. Carl tried it from another angle,
another. The gun began to heat up under his hand, but an invisible
shell of energy blocked off its beam from the box.

He walked back into the cabin across the alleyway. The girl came in
behind him and fastened the door. Carl laid the hot gun on the table.

"Well, I guess that's that," he said. He sat down on a bench by the
port and contemplated the deck.

The girl came over and sat beside him. For a long time she gazed out
through the glass, saying nothing, and then in a weak voice she asked:

"Do you suppose those are molecules?"

Carl looked up. Outside was a tremendously enlarged section of a dust
particle. It was almost transparent, and made up of little dots that
jerked to and fro.

"I suppose so," he said, trying to keep his voice steady. Molecules, he
thought. Molecules, then atoms, then electrons and then--

He closed his eyes and tried to banish the dancing dots from his mind.
He could feel his heart thumping heavily in his chest. When he opened
his eyes again, the dots had expanded. Each dot, he saw, was made of
colored spheres arranged in a pattern--four blue, one red and two
orange. The patterns twisted slowly, passing through one another like
squads of soldiers in a complicated drill, yet all the time holding
their arrangement. Far out from the port he saw another group of three
green and two yellow spheres.

The scream of the Reducer went up another notch. The lights in the ship
dimmed and went out.

"It's drawing off all the current," Carl said. Splashes of red and blue
light were playing over the girl's body. She moved closer to him, wide
eyes fixed on the port. Carl felt her fingers searching for his hand.

A red sphere floated up to the port. It bulged and faded to a blurred
pink, and the pink was darting lights that spread out, enclosing the
ship.

This is an atom, Carl thought. We're inside an atom. The tightness
around his chest grew into a constricting pain.

Then far out in the distance, the core of the red sphere swung into
view--a mass of glittering diamonds. It drifted toward them, holding
its shape till Carl was certain it was going to crash the ship. Then it
separated, and one diamond hung before the port.

[Illustration: There beside Thela, Carl waited for the ripping
explosion which would send them into nothingness.]

Carl, gripping the girl's hand, waited for a ripping explosion that
would send them into nothingness. The explosion did not come. The
trembling light floated toward them, and slowly dissolved into silvery
powder that spread itself across a backdrop of blackness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Staggering up to the port, Carl dragged the girl with him. Distant
points of light hurtled past them. The ship was plunging into an abyss.
No, it was plunging toward one of the tiny white points of light that
was expanding, brightening into a ball, a sphere, a gigantic solid
sphere with a scarred surface, with--

Carl was aware that his ears were ringing. The Reducer had shut off,
its scream replaced by the deep, familiar roar of tail jets. The girl
was shaking his arm and pointing.

"Don't you recognize it?" she asked. "Don't you recognize it?"

And of course he did recognize it, even though every ounce of logic in
his makeup rebelled when he finally said:

"Yes, it's the Earth. The land mass right in front of us is
North America." He went into the control cabin and shut off the
interplanetary drive.

It was quite a few minutes later, when they were skimming over the
peaks of the Rockies with everything ready for a landing, before the
pieces began to fit together in his mind.

"You know," he said slowly, "I guess it does make sense. We say space
is curved. We say a beam of light, if it went far enough would end up
at its starting point. In fact, some astronomers say that nebulae in
one part of the sky might be the same nebulae we see in another part
of the sky, and we're actually seeing them twice because the light
has traveled clear round the universe. Well, then, if the universe
is curved and self-contained in one way, it must be curved and
self-contained in every way. It's like the old symbol of the serpent
swallowing its own tail."

Carl looked over his shoulder. "Are you listening?"

She was frowning at the shiny plates in the after bulkhead. "Yes, I'm
listening."

Carl turned back. He studied the topography unreeling itself on the
visiplate, and eased back the accelerator lever a trifle.

"The way I see it, if light comes back to its starting point, there
is no infinitely distant place. In the same way there would be no
infinitely small size. There's no end or beginning to anything, and if
you travel far enough in any one direction, you always come back to
where you started from. Do you follow me?"

"Well--" She kept staring at the after bulkhead.

"Did you ever study Kant?"

"Kant?"

"Yes, he's a very ancient German philosopher--lived way back when they
didn't have a world government or anything. It was all in a required
philosophy course I took at the University."

"I always steered clear of philosophy," she said. She did not take her
eyes off the after plates.

"Well this fellow Kant claimed that time and space were just creations
of our own minds, and he tried to prove it by extending the logical
implications of them into the structure of the universe till they
contradicted themselves and became meaningless. Let's see, how did he
put it?"

Carl leaned back in the pilot's chair and scratched his head. "First
of all he said the universe must be finite, because it's made up of
the sum of its parts, and as its parts are units, you could never add
up finite units and get infinity. Then he took the other side of the
argument and pointed out that if it was finite, it must have limits,
and if it has limits, it has limits in relation to something beyond it.
And the universe is everything that is, so there couldn't be anything
beyond, except more universe, and if it keeps on going like that, it
isn't finite. But it's not infinite either, so what is it?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The girl started to say something, but Carl held up his hand. "Wait a
minute. I'm not through."

"Kant's conclusion was that space and time were handy, man-made
illusions. But maybe it's the idea of infinity that's the man-made
illusion. It's the idea of infinity and beginnings and endings that
cross you up when you try to reason out how small things can become, or
how large the universe can be.

"We admit the universe is curved and self-contained in one way when
we say light returns to its starting point. It must be curved and
self-contained every other way too. And just as there's no infinite
distance, so there's no infinite size, large or small. Whichever way
you look at it, it's part of a circle, and if you travel far enough in
any one direction, you always come back to the place you started from.
Maybe exploding atoms and expanding galaxies are the same things from
different points of view." He took a breath. "Now what were you going
to say?"

"Are we going to land at Francisco City?"

It took him a few seconds to get his mind down to the question. "Those
were the orders that came through fifteen minutes ago. What's worrying
you?"

"There'll be visigraph reporters and cameramen, won't there?"

Carl twisted around in his seat to see what it was she kept looking
at. It dawned suddenly. The shiny after bulkhead plate made a perfect
mirror. All that time then, he had been talking to himself. She
probably hadn't even been trying to listen.

"Don't tell me you're nervous."

"No, but--" She spread out the fold of her silky skirt. "Do you think
it looks funny? It's really just a piece of an old parachute."

Carl hung on to the controls till the dizziness cleared from his head.
She dragged herself across a Martian desert, she fell through a hole in
the Universe, and you were scared to death all the time for fear she'd
go to pieces, and she comes out of it worrying about the cut of her
dress.

"You look fine," Carl said. "You look wonderful." And as he circled the
field and brought the ship down on the runway, it dawned on him that
she really did look wonderful, and in two minutes she would be stepping
out of this ship, and maybe out of his life for keeps.

He got up from the pilot's chair, and caught her before she reached the
hatch.

"Thela," he said. "There's a crowd of people out there. I'll be taken
to the director's office right away to answer questions about this
ship, and the government officials will be quizzing you all night about
everything we found out and--"

"Yes?" She moved away from him, eyes narrowing.

"After it's over let's get together."

"To discuss some technical aspects of space curvature perhaps?"

"You--" He started to pull her to him, but she twisted away. She was
looking at the ports, jammed now with peering faces.

"I'm listed in the consular directory like all the other employees,"
she said. She smiled and opened the hatch.

Two government officials helped her down into the crowd. He watched her
walk away, and kept thinking about the smile. It was like the Reducer.
You thought things were over with and then you suddenly realized they
were just beginning.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The long way back" ***


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