Chapter XII: Dawn in Flame

Virginia followed Bronson down to the laboratory in a daze, and she comprehended only about one half of what he was saying. The one thing that she did not understand was why he knew nothing of Earth Two. She believed she had sent him there and the double transfer should have awakened him.

That should have left him aware of his transfer to Earth Three when Kingston kidnaped him.

Kingston could have told her that the bright sky light she saw in her half-state had been but the temporarily-transferred atomic flame but Kingston was not there. So instead of wanting to kill her summarily for her double-cross, Ed Bronson still believed that she was originally of Earth One, had been kidnaped as he had been.

Virginia did find it a bit amusing--perhaps it was the hysteria that acts as a safety valve when things are so unreasonable that the mind will not accept them without seeking its funny side.

Dawn was breaking as Bronson finished his explanation and, as the light increased, he turned to the equipment and said, "We've got this all to ourselves here. I couldn't find your crystal on Earth One--and besides, if Kingston can flange up some means of detecting the presence of the stuff on Earth One, there'd be but that one to detect.

"And I couldn't set this mausoleum down on Earth One near any city street. No room. I'm assuming that your diggings are in the city?"

He did not wait for Virginia to answer, but turned to the equipment and started to look it over in earnest. "This," he said, "I've got to know more about."

Virginia could have told him but she merely nodded vaguely and said nothing. She thought it over.

"Have you any hope at all of saving your world?" she asked--and then gasped because she had not said "our world."

She might have saved her fear, for he did not notice. "Some," he said, straightening up from the gear and looking at her with a half smile.

"Do I sound disloyal," she said tremulously, "if I suggest that if Earth Three wins we have the means here to join them?" Virginia hoped to gain some idea of his feelings on the subject so that she could calculate his intentions.

Bronson shook his head grimly. "Earth Three," he said, "appears to have all the cards. No one doubts that Earth Two is doomed and is no true menace compared to Three. Earth Three is cognizant of its possible fate and is most certainly working furiously to avoid it."

"They plot and plan against Earth One while Earth One sleeps in the peace of false security. Lord knows, I've tried to tell them, and they are so incapable of understanding this affair that they tried to slap me in the clink for believing it." He laughed bitterly. "When I was a kid in school they tried to tell me that any man who tells the truth has nothing to fear."

"But if Earth Three wins--as it seems certain to do?" she insisted.

"That would be bad," he said.

"Why?"

"Virginia," he said soberly, "I don't quite know what it is but there's something very wrong with Earth Three. Confound it, it's simple enough, too, but for the life of me I cannot see it."

"What can be wrong with a world where science and knowledge are not suppressed?"

"I don't know," he said irritably. "But there's something wrong with Earth Three." He turned back to the gear again. "The one thing we must be on the watch for is the day when Kingston sends word for his trustees to assemble his space-resonant materials into a supercritical mass.

"Also we must watch to see that he does not use yours. I'm going to duplicate this equipment first and then your job will be to keep an eye on Kingston all the time while I work out this stuff."

Bronson looked around him with a cynical smile. "Books, data, equipment, and supplies," he said. "This is not like finding the science of an ancient culture. This is a man finding a complete means of study of a science of his own civilization removed but a few years to the future.

"I've often laughed," he went on cheerfully, "at what Volta and Henry might think if they saw a modern circuit. But give them books, equipment and material and they would work it out soon enough.

"Radio, for instance, would have had its inception in the middle of the nineteenth century if twentieth century measuring and testing equipment and books had been handy. So," he strode over to a bookcase and took out a heavy tome, "we work this out."

Virginia shook her head unhappily. "Why, oh why did this thing happen?"

* * * * *

Bronson smiled tolerantly. "Because of the chances," he said thoughtfully. "I'm no believer in a great and benevolent god who interferes with his subjects. I'm more inclined to look upon God as an intellect interested in the problems of his subjects and quite willing to let them work out their own destiny--if for no other reason than to discover whether He had built well.

"You cannot know how good your toy is if you insist upon helping it over the difficult places with your hands. It must run of itself to be a good model.

"Now I'm not exactly convinced that Nature or God was baffled by this thing that His toy built and therefore held His benevolent--but baffled--hand in the stream of time to see which was the best.

"I'm inclined to think there was a good scientific explanation of why time should have split three ways--why in one case the earth entered fission, why the thing worked properly in another time-stream and why the Alamogordo Bomb fizzled in a third."

"Can you find out why--and what it could have been?" she asked.

He laughed shortly. "It isn't mumbo-jumbo or magic," he said. "All of the things attributed to mumbo-jumbo are based upon facts not known to those who observe the effects. The very fact that there was some doubt about the outcome of the Alamogordo Bomb proved that the best brains knew their knowledge of nuclear physics was incomplete."

Virginia nodded brightly. "So you think that some unknown factor caused the trouble?"

"Obviously. We know that fissionable materials do operate. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were of different types of material, giving us at least two different proofs of its operation. We have too little knowledge of Earth Three but I'm reasonably certain that, once the original experiment failed, fissionable reactions took place and are taking place now. We know even less of the affair of Earth Two. We don't know but can assume that later attempts would turn out properly."

Virginia said nothing. She nodded sagely, and her nod was based upon the fact that she knew he was right but could not say so lest she be forced to tell the rest of her story.

"So," he said, "we can assume that something was either generated or present in the mixture at Alamogordo that, in one case, stopped the reaction, in the next case, permitted the thing to work and, in the third case, started the atomic fire in the earth."

"How do you go about finding it?" she asked. Virginia was interested. This theory was new to her, but it sounded reasonably solid.

He grinned unhappily. "The trouble with making experiments in atomic explosions is that it leaves so little stuff to measure afterwards." He lifted a crystal of the space-resonant elements and looked at it with wrinkled forehead.

"Something in this crystal holds the answer. I think we should analyze this material right down to the most infinitesimal trace. Then we can find out which of the included elements is responsible for the original problem."

"I can help," said Virginia.

He smiled grimly. "Your job is to keep an eye on Maddox and Kingston. See if you can locate their men on Earth One, also see what you can do toward locating those four subcritical masses. We must keep Kingston and the rest of his gang from entering Earth One." He looked at her thoughtfully. "Also keep an eye on your own collection."

Virginia smiled and nodded. She looked him squarely in the eye and said, "My collection of those elements is very small."

"Um," he said. "It's more than possible that the various functions of the space-resonant elements depends upon their mass. For instance, a small quantity might be suitable for mere communication--a larger quantity may be required for the visual communication, while a still larger mass is needed for a physical transfer.

"How their division comes with respect to the transfer of objects or messages from time plane to time plane is something that might be baffling."

"But what are you going to do right now?" asked Virginia.

"First, I'm going to see what can be done about building a detector for the supercritical masses," he said. "Then we're going to do some micro-analysis on these crystals."

Virginia was silent. She was not entirely convinced that there was something wrong with the culture on Earth Three. Earth Three obviously had all of the scientific cards, what with years of research and no restrictions or regulations.

However, Virginia was content to remain where she was for a short time. There was little point in making an abrupt change just then. Any moment that danger threatened Virginia knew that she could escape to Earth Three and be safe. Her decision to remain was based upon her lifetime of training on Earth Two.

Regardless of any decision to eschew a former life, the training of a lifetime will remain. That Virginia had no intention of remaining on Earth Two did not remove her interest in the main problem of her life. Bronson had some theories that were interesting. Therefore Virginia was content to remain and learn all she could.

Such knowledge might come in handy at a later date.

* * * * *

Leader Kingston leaned back against a counter and regarded his cohorts with a cold stare. Maddox growled in his throat and the three guards cowered because theirs had been a crime punishable by death for hundreds of years.

"Well," asked Maddox, "what do we do now?"

"The first thing," said Kingston sharply, "is to locate ourselves."

"That shouldn't be hard," said Maddox, looking around. Kingston nodded, regarding his wrist watch.

"It is near-morning in New Mexico," he said. "Where we are now is midnight."

"It's also cold--and that lettering on the window is Russian. We are in eastern Siberia."

Kingston made some calculations. "We're lucky at that," he said. "So long as morning comes in Washington before morning comes here we are in no great danger. The fact is," he added, regarding his watch once more, "that the monitors will be taking up their regular duty in a few minutes. Otherwise we might have no end of trouble."

Maddox shrugged. A pajama-clad man has little dignity and very little authority. To be trapped in a foreign country--one whose politics differ from your own--under highly suspicious circumstances might well result in a long period of enforced inactivity. Bronson had been in a hurry when he had performed the shipping operation. Had he taken time to think it over, Bronson would have sent them to some place where their arrival would have brought them instant apprehension.

But Bronson had been in a hurry and his only desire was to ship them to some spot not fitted with instant means of escape. He would have preferred some place where no space-resonant element existed but that was impossible since the technique demanded a focal mass.

"So," said Kingston, showing Maddox the silvery-metal band on his wrist, "as soon as the monitors take over and locate me, we'll--"

* * * * *

He disappeared in mid-sentence and Maddox followed a few seconds later. The guards vanished at regular intervals, leaving the Russian store vacant once again.

Minutes later Kingston and Maddox emerged from a standard transmission building not far from the site of the laboratory. Maddox was puzzling openly. "Bronson has probably ripped the tuning circuit from my receiver," he said. "But what would that gain him?"

"Only a few minutes more time," said Kingston. "Instead of our landing back home again, we must use a standard line and walk a few squares. I--look!"

"Heaven!" breathed Maddox.

The laboratory site was, naturally, vacant.

"I didn't think it possible," said Maddox.

"But where did he take it?" wondered Kingston.

"Who knows?" said Maddox, spreading his hands.

"We can find out but it will take time. My guess is Earth Two somewhere. He'd be a fool to stay here where he can be found easily."

"It wouldn't be too easy if Bronson has hashed up the keyed tuning circuit," grunted Maddox angrily. "Confound it, that reduces the problem to one of searching two worlds for the right mass of elements."

Kingston shook his head. "We're about ready," he said. "Give us another week or so and we can eliminate all opposition." His face hardened. "In fact, we can start to spread the atomic fire on Earth Two at any time."

They turned back to the standard transmission building and returned to Washington. There was nothing they could do without the laboratory and there were other, well-equipped laboratories in Washington. Actually, so far as the operations in the space-resonant bands were concerned, location meant very little. It had been merely convenient to locate in Maddox's place.

Once returned to Kingston's official building, the leader set his operatives to checking the supercritical masses in the vain hope of locating one of them that existed in the stolen laboratory.

Bronson's statement that he wanted a detector did not mean none existed. All forms of communication require the two main components--generator and detector. Kingston's men, to track down the stolen laboratory, merely tuned through the space-resonant bands, stopping every time they hit a response so that they could check the neighborhood visually.

What Bronson wanted was not a mere detector. He wanted some means of knowing definitely when the subcritical masses of his own space-resonant elements were reassembled. This is comparable to a device that will register whenever a radio transmitter is turned on, regardless of frequency or location.

Bronson knew that the tuning qualities of the space-resonant effects depended mostly on the mass of the crystals. He knew the mass of his own stuff but that had been formed to serve as fluorescent material and the amount of the space-resonant elements in that mass was uncertain--especially in view of the fact that Earth One was still to learn of the space-resonant bands.

So Bronson's knowledge of the mass of his own crystal did not include the proportion of these new elements and therefore he had little knowledge of how the divided masses would resonate.

It was quite a project--but it had to be done.