Fantastic Stories Presents the Fantastic Universe Super Pack. Roger Dee

“We are alike, really. Almost so. Like—like flame and gas are both substance yet different. We are two types of the same thing. I am no longer frightened. I am no longer lonely. You are good for me.”

      I was relieved because I wanted to be. I believed the other Marl—no, the Pat—because I wanted to believe. I did not bother to rationalize. I felt elation.

      “Then in that other time, that other place we both belonged to a—a common group, with another name?” I suggested.

      “I believe so,” the Pat answered.

      “How was it when you came awake?” I asked. “Can you remember?”

      “I think so. I recall I was born here in fright because it was all wrong. I was not in my natural state, so it was not right.” The Pat paused to think. “I remember there was great speed and I was born in fright. Were you?”

      “No,” I answered. “I was not frightened at first. And I was never frightened to the degree you were. I was mostly lonely, which is related to fear. But when I first conceived of my existence here I was coolly logical. I awakened reasoning—realizing that I existed.”

      “I suppose it has to do with our emotional differences,” the Pat beside me or with me or within me communicated.

      “Do you recall where in space you came from?” I asked. “I must have been doubting my existence at first so intensely I did not observe. You seem to have taken your own being for granted, thus you were, perhaps, more observant.”

      “I—I think so.” The Pat hesitated and I knew it was observing the stars around us. “Yes. Come with me. I think I know where.”

      I stayed with the Pat, a part of it, and we lurched through space. Rather, we ceased to exist at one point in space and existed in another. How far? Distances meant nothing.

      “It was here,” the Pat informed me finally.

      *

      Something was wrong here. The interweaving waves of force were all wrong. There was a disorder, a great cancer in space. The waves interfered with the progress of each other all along a great barrier. It was not natural, not like it was elsewhere.

      “Something is wrong with the waves of force crossing this area. They interfere with each other. New forces are created. Do you detect it?” I communicated.

      “I feel it,” the Pat answered. “It is a sickness in space like—like our loneliness.”

      I knew the comparison was ridiculous but I let it pass. “You said you came alive at great speed. I could have been traveling too. We must have plunged into this barrier. It seems to me that emotions must originate in a physical being; perhaps reason could be free, but not emotion. I don’t know. But I have a theory. I believe our physical selves still exist somewhere in space. The barrier, perhaps, interfered with the normal functioning of our mental equipment. We exist at one point in space and we are thinking, experiencing emotions at another point. It’s as if our minds are—are broadcasting our thoughts and emotions far away from our physical selves. Either that, or our rationales were torn free and only our emotions are broadcast. Does that sound logical?”

      “Yes,” the Pat agreed, “I believe that is the answer.”

      I felt that the Pat was pleased with my theory, that it greatly admired my reasoning. I also perceived that it had no idea what I meant by the explanation. I did not mind.

      “You said you were moving at great speed,” I continued. “Can you remember the line, the direction you were traveling in?”

      The Pat hesitated only a moment. “Yes. You perceive the star cluster there, the triangular one? My heading was in that direction, but it was changing fast.”

      “Then we could find nothing by traveling toward the triangular cluster?”

      “No. I was moving in an arc in the direction of the distorted square cluster there. Do you see it?”

      “Yes,” I answered, knowing her use of the word see was unconscious. “That is Cetus.”

      “Cetus?” The Pat was startled. “How do you know that?”

      “I don’t know. The name came to me. It seemed right to call it that.”

      “It—it’s all so frightening!”

      I had no time for pampering our emotions, though I was at great peace with the Pat so near me. Time might prove vital. “Neither would it do any good to travel in the direction of Cetus,” I said.

      “No. No,” the Pat communicated. “If there is any object of matter or force I was a part of in that other existence traveling through space, it is in an arc. The best we can do is take an arbitrary direction between the triangular cluster and the one called Cetus and hope to intercept the object, the other part of me, whatever it is.”

      “Come with me,” I ordered.

      I discovered the object of mass hurtling through space before the Pat did. It was symmetrical and metallic. I tore myself away from my companion and darted to meet it. I discovered it was a shell, a hollow thing, and I passed inside. There was a room there. There were projections and circles of transparent matter. I experienced the symbol dials.

      There were two other creatures seated close to the dials, things of matter, and their substance was protoplasm. But there was no rationale present in either of them. I examined the living matter of the smaller one swiftly. Organs seemed poised in a suspended state. The creature I observed, housed in a protective shell, seemed paralyzed or dead. I remembered the word dead.

      Then the Pat was with me again. “I—I feel something, Marl. I am frightened. What are they, those things there?”

      “They seem to be—” I stopped communicating.

      The Pat had disappeared!

      The thing of protoplasm nearest me was moving but I was no longer interested. I remember the Pat had touched the upper extremity of the creature and had vanished, had ceased to be.

      The old sickness was back. I was lonely. I wanted the other entity. I could not, did not wish to exist without the Pat.

      I darted frantically about the metal shell, here and there, searching, searching. Where was the Pat? I screamed for it. I thought Pat as far away as I could reach, but there was no reaction, no response at all.

      In my frenzy, I was back beside the creatures of protoplasm before I realized it, near the one I had not yet examined.

      “Perhaps they took her,” I thought. It was not logical, but it was a hope. Hope is emotional; I was becoming more emotional than rational.

      I touched the larger of the two creatures, experimentally; moved cautiously inside it, searching, searching.

      Suddenly I was seized by a great force, an inexorable power that grasped me and wrenched me, tearing me from the point in space I had occupied a moment before. My perception blurred, but I was not frightened. Without the Pat I did not care what happened. I was intensely curious. “So this is how it is,” I reasoned in a flash, “to cease to be.”

      And I ceased to be . . . .

      *

      Marlow shook his head. I must have dozed, he thought. He glanced at the chronometer on the console ahead. No, only a minute or two had elapsed since the last time he had checked.

      “Sleepy head! Wake up and live!”

      He looked to his right. Pat sat in the navigator’s seat smiling at him.

      “I didn’t sleep, honestly,” he protested. “We hit some sort of barrier back there. It knocked me out for a moment. I had the damnedest impression—”

      “Remember