The Sci-Fi Stories - Cyril M. Kornbluth Edition. Cyril M. Kornbluth

      “For me,” breathed Mr. Sapphire, “you will suspend these laws. Do not interrupt. I can give you only a few minutes more before I retire for a treatment.

      “All creation is in motion, we know. So we are taught. Earth moves about the sun, sun about the great hub of the galaxy, the galaxy in a mighty circle about its own directrix—space itself, ‘ether,’ so called, is like a mighty ball rolling and tumbling through unimaginable chaos. To this outside of space we cannot attain, for to go to the end of space is to return to the starting point.

      “But there is another locus in space—wholly unique, wholly at variance with any other time-and-space sector that may be marked off. Can you conceive of it?”

      Angel, his brows closely knit, shot out: “The vortex! The hub around which space revolves—space at rest and absolutely without motion!”

      With the faintest suggestion of mockery in his voice Mr. Sapphire whispered, “The celebrated superman has it. Utterly unique and lawless—or perhaps with laws of its own? At any rate it must be obvious that the limitations which bind matter in space are removed in this vortex of Dead Center.”

      “And I am to find it and release a certain amount of matter, your body, from certain restrictions, that is, human decrepitude?” countered Angel.

      “That is it. You will work for me?”

      “Damn right I will,” exploded Angel. “And not for your money or anything you have to offer—but just for the kick of finding your quiet spot and doping it out!”

      “That,” whispered Mr. Sapphire, “is how I had estimated it.” The wall began to slide back into place again, hiding his shriveled body and tangle of machinery, when he spoke again: “Use the metal tab lying on that table.” He was gone.

      Angel looked about, and as a table lit up with a little flash, he picked a tag of some shiny stuff from it and pocketed the thing. He heard the ponderous door grind open behind him.

      CHAPTER II.

       Table of Contents

      Angel, his mind buzzing with figures and colossal statistics, had aimlessly wandered into the proving room. Assistants leaped to attention, for he was known as a captain in the Tri-Planet Guard. And the ship and plotting were, of course, official business. That was only one of the many ways in which his work had been made easier. But work it still was—the hardest, most gruelling kind of work of which any man could be capable. The first job he had ordered had been the construction of immense calculating machines of a wholly novel type. He could not waste his own time and his own energy on the job of simple mathematics. He just showed up with the equations and theoretical work well mapped out and let the machines or his assistants finish it off.

      “At ease,” he called. “Get back to work, kids.” He ambled over to the main structural forge and confronted the foreman. “Rawson,” he said, “as I planned it this job should be finished by now.”

      Rawson, burly and hard, stared at the Angel with something like contempt. “You planned wrong,” he said, and spat.

      Angel caught him flat-footed. After one belt on the chin Rawson was down and out. “How much longer on this job?” he asked a helper.

      “Nearly done now, sir. Who’s stuck with the proving-ground tests?”

      “Nobody’s stuck. I’m taking her out myself.”

      With something like concern the helper eyed Maclure. “I don’t know, sir,” he volunteered. “In my opinion it isn’t safe.”

      “Thanks,” said the Angel with a grin. “That’s what we aim to find out.” He climbed into the ship—small and stubby, with unorthodox fins and not a sign of a respectable atmospheric or spacial drive-unit, and nosed around. He grunted with satisfaction. No spit-and-polish about this job—just solid work. To the men who were working a buffer-wheel against the hull he called, “That’s enough. I’m taking her out now.” They touched their caps, and there was much whispering as Maclure closed the bulkhead.

      * * * * *

      With a light, sure touch he fingered the controls and eased the ship inches off the ground, floating it to the take-off field, deeply furrowed with the scars of thousands of departing rockets. There was no fanfare or hullabaloo as he depressed the engraved silver bar on the extreme right of the dash. But in response to that finger-touch the ship simply vanished from the few observers and a gale whipped their clothes about them.

      Maclure was again in the black of space, the blinking stars lancing through the infinitely tough plastic windows. And he was travelling at a speed which had never before been approached by any man. “Huh!” he grunted. “I always knew I could work it out.” He saw the moon in the distance—about a million miles behind and to starboard.

      Deliberately he cut into the plane of the ecliptic, determined to take on any meteorites that might be coming. He had a deflection device that needed testing.

      Through the clear window before him he saw a jagged chunk of rock far off, glinting in the sun. Deliberately he set out to intersect with its path. As they met there was a tension in the atmosphere of the ship that set his hair on end. But there was no shock as he met the meteorite; he did not meet it at all, for when it was about a yard from the ship it shimmered and seemed to vanish.

      Maclure was satisfied; the distortion unit was in order. And the chances of meeting anything so freakish as a meteorite were so small that he did not need any further protection. He was whistling happily as he headed back to Earth.

      Then, abruptly, there was a peculiar chiming resonance to the idling whisper of the drive-units. And in the back of Angel’s head a little chord seemed to sound. It was like something remembered and forgotten again. Scarcely knowing what he was saying and not caring at all he called softly: “I can hear you!”

      The chiming sound mounted shrilly, seemed to be struggling to form words. Finally, in a silvery tinkle of language he heard: “We’re superhet with your malloidin coils. Can’t keep it up like this. Full stop—all power in malloidin for reception. Okay?”

      That, at least, he could understand. Someone had performed the almost impossible task of superhetrodyning some sort of nodular wave of constant phase-velocity into a coil set up as an anchor-band! He groaned at the thought of the power it must have taken and flung the ship to a halt, reversing his power to flow through the anchoring coil that was receiving the message. It sounded again: “That’s better. Can you make it 7:7:3, please?”

      He snapped insulated gloves on his hands and adjusted the armature windings. “God knows where they get their juice from,” he thought. “But I hope they have plenty of it.”

      “We can’t hear you, Angel Maclure,” said the voice from the coils. “This must be going through to you, though, because you’ve followed our requests. I can’t get detailed, because this little message will burn out every power-plant we have. Do not return to Earth. Do not return to Earth. Do you get that? Come instead to coordinates x-3, y-4.5, z-.1—get that? three, four point five, point one. We’ll be able to contact you further there. But whatever you do, don’t return to Earth. Signing off—”

      The metallic voice clicked into silence. Maclure, mind racing, grabbed for a star-map. The coordinates indicated in the message were those of a fairly distant and thinly-filled sector of space. He hesitated. Why the hell not? No man had ever been beyond Pluto, but was he a man?

      He grinned when he remembered his tight-fisted, close-mouthed father who had made him what he was with a gruelling course of training that began actually before he was born.

      Yes, he decided, he was a man all right, and with all of a man’s insatiable curiosity he set his course for the distant cubic parsec that was indicated by the coordinates he had so strangely heard through a drive-unit receiver. And with all the fantastic speed of which his craft was capable