Chapter XI: Reunion on Earth Three

In a small but comfortable room in Maddox's laboratory Bronson found time to object to Kingston's statement that anyone adhering to a principle is automatically a fanatic. A fanatic, according to one of Bronson's rather cynical definitions, was any man who adhered to a set of principles at variance with your own.

Time went on slowly and it became dark eventually. Bronson could hardly believe that he had been a free and happy scientist but a few days ago, that all that had happened to him had occurred in so short a time.

He had taken a few hours of sleep not long ago but it was insufficient. Now, with the entire program at a standstill, nervous reaction set in and the enforced inactivity drove Bronson deep into the fatigue he had been ignoring because of nervous energy. He sprawled on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a short time--and then slept.

Bronson awoke much later and saw by his watch that it was about three o'clock in the morning. By then he was slept out and quite ready to test his brain and his body against Kingston and Maddox.

Lying on the bed Bronson tried to plan.

The main problem was to effect an exit and take a look around--cooped up here he could do nothing at all. His mind, having been geared to fast action for days, was now craving more action. It was like a drug. And a portion of his mind told him that if all this could happen in a short time, there was reason to believe that more concentrated action might solve the puzzle.

So Bronson arose and inspected the door. The place had not been designed as a prison. The door was a normal door and the lock was a flimsy affair intended to serve merely as a warning to the uninvited that the room was forbidden. It would give no trouble at all to someone determined to enter--or to get out.

Bronson smiled in the dim moonlight. Undoubtedly, Kingston felt that, with no place to go, Bronson's freedom was unimportant.

He went to the closet and found a couple of wire coat-hangers. One of these he twisted into a small hook to probe the lock. It was a simple single-tumbler bolt lock and Bronson lifted the tumbler easily and slid the bolt back. The door opened on oiled hinges and he was in the clear.

His first move was to the street door. That was heavily locked and barred and, engineer that Ed Bronson was, picking a lock of that calibre was beyond his ability. He checked the windows but every window was equipped with a slender, ornamental grille-work that was as effective a barrier as the plain bars of the average jail.

Bronson shrugged. Whatever the score, whatever the outcome, he had to make some move. Not the kind of idiotic physical strife against Kingston and his minions which would get him only a broken head with nothing gained, but some move based upon the thing that Bronson knew best. He knew little of the space-resonant communicator but there was a bare chance of his finding out.

Virginia--what had happened to her in the melee? Had she escaped and, if so, could he communicate with her from Kingston's gear upstairs. Or was Virginia also a prisoner in this scientific mausoleum?

Questions all--and no answers. Bronson felt complete futility once more.

He raced upstairs. If the space resonator would cross the temporal rift to Earth One, it would also cross to Earth Two. Perhaps, he reasoned, with greater difficulty because Earth One was the focal point and the more stable. And, if what little he knew about Earth Two were correct, Earth Two might well never learn of Earth Three despite the presence on all hands of the focal elements.

Delving into the lesser facets of a science was not permitted on Earth Two. Some high brass on Earth Two must have viewed the transmission possibilities of the space-resonant elements and decided that they were to be used for transportation and communication and nothing more. Some brass with fear, pardonably ignorant of the fact that just beyond his fingertips in the depths of an unknown science lay hidden the secret that would give them hope.

So much for regulated science!

* * * * *

The equipment was mostly of mass-manufacture. That helped. Nameplates were written in plain enough English and the controls were not difficult to understand. Bronson studied it quite some time before making his first move, then reached forward and snapped on the master switch.

He turned the switch marked "video" and the screen came to life. Maddox had made pencil-marks on the power dial to indicate the depth of penetration necessary to reach both of the other temporal worlds. Bronson tried Earth One gingerly and saw his own home. Maddox had left the controls set when the news of Bronson's capture had come.

Bronson tried the steering controls and sent the plane of view along the silent street of his own world. It went on a skew because the line-up of angles was imperfect and Bronson found that he had to manipulate a side-swing control in conjunction with the line control to keep the plane of view from angling off into the houses that lined the street.

Then, with the equipment's secrets available for him to study, Bronson abandoned such study in order to think and plan more thoroughly.

The lock upon his door was certainly not the kind that any man in his right sense would use to imprison any but a schoolchild. That did not ring true, even though Kingston and Maddox held him in contempt and knew that Bronson could never return to Earth One.

There was more to it than that. He turned back to the equipment and set the depth-dial to zero-zero. Then, with an amused shock, Bronson was looking at a view of himself who was looking at the viewscreen upon which was the same picture. Lack of definition in the picture elements prevented the scene from being repeated to the infinitely small.

But there was no time for fooling. So Ed Bronson lifted the plane of view and passed the plane entirely through the top floor of the building. He brought it back once it had reached the back and repassed it again, setting it aside by nine-tenths of its span. On the fourth pass Bronson saw something, plucked at the switches and rotated the plane of view.

Here was a small room. Two cots were there with a sleeping man in each. They were in uniform. A third man lounged in an easy chair--asleep.

Bronson breathed more easily. For, on a small portable viewer, was the bedroom that Bronson had recently vacated. Guards, obviously, and one of them luckily eligible for court-martial for sleeping on his watch!

Bronson spun the distance dial wildly, and saw a kaleidoscope of color, land, rock, and stream. He cared not where it was that he came upon the supercritical mass of space resonant elements--all he cared was that it was a goodly distance away.

He did smile when he saw the name of the store on the window--not that he could read it for, to Ed Bronson, lettering in Russian might as well be read from either inside or outside or upside-down or backwards--because he had a hunch that uniformed guards trying to explain their undesirable presence in a Russian store would be at a loss to explain how they had got there.

* * * * *

His hand found the key marked TRANSMISSION and he saw all three guards land on the hard cold floor, awake, and start to ask themselves what had happened.

He left them to their wonder, though he admitted that at any less strenuous time it would be most interesting to watch their complete discomfort and amazement. He brought back the scene of view and continued to pass the plane back and forth through the building. On the floor below the guards--in the apartment next to his own place of imprisonment--the field of view passed over a bed. A tousle of hair and an outstretched arm caused Bronson to blink.

"Virginia!" he breathed.

They had captured her, too. Well. That meant some saving in time. Virginia would help him. Since the mass of crystals in his own lab had been reduced to non-operative masses and well separated, the only other possible mass was that in Virginia's place. What they would do, of course, was to get back on Earth One and subdivide her crystals into ineffectual masses and then instigate a search for the parts of his own. Once he locked the invaders out they could so remain forever.

Bronson nodded happily. He continued to sweep the plane of view through the building until he came upon Maddox and Kingston. With a grin, he delivered both of them to the same store in Siberia and then returned to the contemplation of his problem.

It seemed a shame to abandon all this gear. And if he took Virginia back with him, through this machine, someone would know instantly where they had gone. There was no known way of fouling up the controls after no one was left in the laboratory to do it.

And despite his amusement at the idea of several irate people trying to explain to an irate officialdom why, how and wherefor, Bronson knew very well that Kingston and Maddox would be able to talk their way home in all too short a time.

Certainly far too short a time to transport the equipment he wanted.

Virginia? Bronson shrugged. He kept forgetting that she knew actually less about this sort of thing than he did. She had said that her gear was far less efficient than his.

Bronson sent the plane of view skimming forward across the earth again, and then thoughtfully set it for Earth Two. Far away from New Mexico, in the lake region of Northern Michigan, Ed Bronson found a small cottage--untenanted but with a supercritical mass of the space-resonant elements available.

Then Bronson expanded the volume of transmission to its utmost, turned up the variac on the line voltage to overload proportions to add to the general increase and then, wondering if he were rushing in where an angel would fear to tread and also remembering that a little knowledge is often a very dangerous thing, Ed Bronson shoved the transmitting switch in with a gesture of finality....

Upstairs, in the room next to Bronson's previous place of imprisonment, Virginia Carlson, formerly of Earth Two, was sleeping easily. Her first big decision had been made--her decision to accept the pleasant aspect of Earth One forever, eschewing her former life. People who insist upon absolute loyalty will scorn her decision. Yet from a pragmatic standpoint, Virginia was correct even though she may have been morally and ethically wrong.

For her own Earth Two had been a sorry place indeed, peopled with neurotics and hopeless mutants, the population more than decimated by the bomb and its radiation effects. Of a minor percentage of the population of Earth Two, Virginia was inclined to view the wholesome and happy population of Earth One as her own kind. Certainly, as a whole and healthy woman in all senses of the word, Virginia did belong.

The decision had not been made without a wrench. It had most definitely been a huge decision. It is never easy to give up an existence completely even though it is less than desirable because of loyalties and friendships made.

Yet the practical aspect was important. Nature--human nature--had created Virginia's decision, not the girl herself. For her life on Earth Two, threatened as it was with extinction within a few short years, violated the very concepts of nature.

First, there is the eon-old instinct for self-preservation. Few mentalities will accept self-negation for the benefit of other people. No stable mentality will accept self-negation when it means little to anyone.

And why her subconscious mind reasoned, should she aid in the destruction of a healthy civilization for the benefit of a civilization already doomed?

No more selfish than anyone else, Virginia knew that nothing she could do would render the people of her own world a healthy race--not after radiation and death and the nerve-shattering fear had taken its toll for thirty years. So Virginia's initial decision had been made.

Then had come Earth Three. And once the abandonment of the first principle had been done, Virginia no longer had loyalty upon which to fall back. Once the idea of self-preservation had come to the fore, it was a mere matter of selecting her future from the practical standpoint alone.

* * * * *

Earth Three certainly had what it took to win. In a culture unhampered by brass-hattism science had made vast strides. From her history she knew that science was a vital factor in any strife and had been for a century or more.

No longer was it possible for a group of farmers to rebel and make it stick. In the American Revolution any armed man was as good as any armed soldier--better in many cases since the armed farmer was not restrained by certain codes and restrictions.

But for years the armed farmer, though willing and able, was not possessed of the weapons of modern warfare. Tanks are not needed on a farm. Flamethrowers are not a household item. Machine-guns are inefficient against ducks and geese. Pursuit aircraft and bombers do not find much service in a peacetime civilization.

So science had removed the concept of Mr. Colt's Equalizer, for while the Colt made all men equal, its superior developments rendered a trained and equipped army far superior to the most avid of citizen armies.

In a similar vein Earth Three, with its unbounded science was, without a doubt, more capable of survival in this affair.

Especially when their objective, Earth One, was lying silently, enjoying its luxury, and not even suspecting the widespread preparations going on. Earth One would be swarmed under and destroyed before it realized what was going on.

Well, reasoned Virginia, since she had decided to accept a future, eschewing her former life on Earth Two, it remained only for her to accept whichever future seemed the most secure.

So Virginia Carlson slept easily, feeling that she had, by chance or by luck, been inserted into the one future that promised the most. Her dreams were untroubled.

The building groaned in the cry of tortured metal and stone. It dropped in a plaster-cracking jar a full half yard, then tilted swiftly to one corner and stopped, settling gradually as the slack was taken up. The roaring groan ceased and left only the crackling sound of fissures running through concrete, the flaking of scale from ironwork, and unimportant splintering and cracking of timber.

Virginia awoke with a cry of fear.

She heard footsteps on the stairs and she wondered what had happened. She knew that Maddox and Kingston were experimenting and wondered whether they had touched off something dangerous. Earthquake came to mind and she wondered about it.

Earthquakes were nothing new to Virginia, since the atomic fire that burned deep into the bowels of Earth Two had released surface strain from time to time as it ate its way through compressed rock-strata.

She sat up in bed and reached for her clothing. No matter what it was it was still better to face trouble dressed.

She was slipping into her frock when the door burst open and, there was Ed Bronson--whom she believed that she had sent to Earth Two. Virginia recoiled automatically.

"Hi," said Bronson cheerfully.

Virginia blinked--mentally, actually and figuratively. According to her mental record of the proceedings, Bronson had every right to extract any penalty he deemed fit.

Dubiously, she replied, "Hi."

"Cheer up," he told her, not noticing her nervousness. "I've just swiped the entire batch--the whole shooting match. Now we can work this out all by ourselves."

Virginia nodded vaguely.

Bronson noticed her uncertainty. "I've just expanded the field of focus or whatever it's called that used to transmit stuff from one temporal plane to the other--and I've shoved you, me, building, foot, horse and marines into Earth Two to get away from that gang."

Virginia recoiled mentally. After all the mad work, the planning, the acceptance of a plan intended to place her in a more desirable future, here she was right back in Earth Two--doomed once more to the creeping atomic flame.