Chapter XIII: To Find the Plan

Cautiously, Virginia entered the laboratory and peered over Ed Bronson's shoulder. "What are those?" she asked.

"Amplifiers," he explained. "I'm hoping to locate the subcritical masses."

Virginia looked dubious. "Where did you get them?" she asked.

He grinned boyishly, "Stole 'em. I searched the laboratories of Earth Three and came up with four of their best. Earth Three does have some advantages."

"Most of them, I fear," said Virginia.

"Yeah, but there's something wrong there."

Virginia asked, "What can be wrong with that kind of technical advance?"

"It isn't only their technical perfection that is wrong. That is fine, and something that Earth One will achieve in the due course of time. There's something else--something basic. Maybe," he grinned, "it is feminine intuition, but it has to be there."

Bronson nodded firmly and then turned to his amplifiers. The closer one he turned upside down on the table and looked into for a time. Then, absently, Bronson reached for a screwdriver and probed into the chassis with the business end.

Virginia gave a cry, "No!"

"No?" he echoed, turning slightly to face her. "It's turned off."

Virginia paused. A moment of wait and her worry about Bronson would have been over. After touching the charged electrode in the way he was about to do, Virginia would have been alone and free to go to Earth Three complete with the laboratory, or to wait and see whether One or Three was successful in the imminent warfare and go to whichever emerged victorious.

She knew that Bronson was quite capable of isolating both of them after collecting the only mass of space-resonant elements on Earth One. He would do that as a last resort to save the rest of his world, regardless of whether he received any acclaim or not. And death would be his reward. For once Earth One was safe, Two and Three would perish and both of them with it.

Yet Virginia found admiration in her heart for this man. Bronson, against great odds, had succeeded in coming this far. He may have made an error in his belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with Earth Three but, none the less, he was possessed of a certain drive and purpose that made her admire him.

"All right, Ed," she told him. "I know more about those amplifiers than I could possibly know had I been truly of Earth One."

He turned and faced her slowly.

"I am Virginia--Carlson," she said.

"Carlson?"

"Carlson. I am the woman you contacted with your hybrid space resonator." Then came the rest of the story from beginning to end. "Curse me if you feel like it, Ed Bronson, but what normal human being would care to spend the rest of her life on a dying world--or to open the door of a fine world to the hapless, horrible mutants who have no future beyond their own life-endings?"

Bronson nodded. "I am no judge," he said solemnly. "Offhand it seems wrong to abandon one's friends for one's own safety. But if one cannot really save one's friends from their horrible fate it seems foolish to remain and die through mere loyalty. It's like that old saw about a live coward being better than a dead hero."

"Then you don't condemn me for seeking safety?"

"Who am I to judge?" he said.

"But supposing Earth Three should be successful?"

"That would prove that Earth Three was best fit to survive. Not for one moment, however, do I believe that some higher agency performed this separation-trick to establish the most successful way of running a world.

"Nature--by which I mean natural phenomena--offers survival's choice to many forms of life and living in many ways, and this split in the time stream is but one of them. I swear that we shall know why it happened some day.

"But, Virginia, I am not to arbitrate your life. I am inclined to think that I might have done the same thing. In fact," he said humorously, "I can find nothing really to be angry about. Even your little job of shipping me to Earth Three resulted in our stealing this laboratory."

"But I sent you to Earth Two."

* * * * *

He shook his head. "I arrived from my bedroom on Earth Three--the same room but a nursery in Three's time trail."

"I saw the same room from half-transfer," she said, "and there was that pillar of atomic fire in the sky."

Bronson blinked.

"So," he said with an explosive exhale of breath. "So the fission-train in the earth will work on Earth Three as well as Two."

"What do you mean?" asked the girl.

"Kingston undoubtedly intends to transfer bits of the earth-fire from Two to One and thus destroy both of them. That was a test. They brought it, noted its performance on Three and then carefully shipped the thing back again."

Virginia snorted angrily. "I'd like to ship the entire Alamogordo Fire to Earth Three and let Kingston and Maddox roast!"

Bronson nodded. "But the thing that strikes me the hardest is that only for that very instant of blast was there the chance for time-fission. Then all three worlds have the same phenomena and the same effects. One might think that Three would remain a place where no fission-explosion could take place while on Two all atomic releases of power start the endless fission in the earth."

"But does that help us any?"

"I don't know yet. But you'll help--now?"

"That I will--and willingly."

"Then tell me," said Bronson amusedly, "just what was I about to do?"

"You were about to touch a high-energy electrode that remains hot for hours after the gear is turned off. One of the energizing circuits. It charges itself with space-resonant energy that does not leak off--sort of like a high-capacity condenser of excellent power factor. You can charge it to lethal dose and it may remain so for hours unless it is discharged."

"Why don't they discharge these, then?"

"It takes too long for them to load when they fire 'em up," explained Virginia. "Usually they remain at high charge between 'off' periods."

Ed Bronson looked into the amplifier with a wry glance. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," he grunted. He squinted at the electrode, lifted an eyebrow and smiled cynically, "Y' know, there ought to be some easy way of telling when a thing is dangerous.

"Once upon a time that which was dangerous came clearly labeled, like fire, or sabretooth tigers. Later they had to pass laws to get folks to put gasoline in red-coated cans. Nowadays practically anything you open up is dangerous and unless you know what you're doing--"

Virginia smiled. She knew that he was just talking, rambling as he scanned the circuit, wondering what to do next. Then she touched his arm gently.

"Look, Ed," she said. "Let me take this job over. I know my way around these things, even though they are of Earth Three instead of mine. You've got other things to do, doubtless?"

Bronson looked at Virginia quizzically.

"Trust me?" she asked.

He smiled. "I think so," he said.

"You can," she said.

Bronson's smile faded. "Look, kiddo," he said, "there's one thing about being just a little bit selfish that most of the books never get around to mentioning. I'd prefer to have someone working beside me who is a bit selfish and inclined to think of himself first.

"The guy who has--in capitals--a Mission In Life is all too inclined to toss common sense into the ashcan so that his flanged-up ideals are realized. At least you can predict the future course of any character who is logical enough to think of himself.

"So--you've made your gesture and until someone convinces me that a bit of selfishness is absolutely wrong--g'wan!" He grinned. "Go to work so that I can stop sounding like a philosopher."

Virginia looked at him soberly for some moments.

"You don't question the fact that I will grab for the winner?"

"We all hope to play a winner, ginger-girl," he said.

"Yes, but--"

"Virginia, you hope to play a winner. Do you greatly care who really wins so long as all is serene, happy, and peaceful?"

"Only one more requisite," she said wistfully, "I'd like to have it remain that way."

* * * * *

Bronson laughed. "It has been adequately pointed out often enough that the gents who formulated the Declaration of Independence guaranteed only the right to 'pursue' happiness. It is a hopeless quest to seek complete peace and quiet."

"Don't talk like that," she said. "I only meant that I'm not too convinced that your idea about Earth Three having something definitely wrong with it--"

Ed Bronson reached forward and put one hand on each of her shoulders. "Look, youngster," he said with a smile, "I'm no hero. I'm not imbued with the spirit of altruism and self-righteous self-sacrifice."

Virginia looked into his eyes solemnly. "You would have little hesitation before you isolated yourself here on Earth One if--"

"Only because I am dead certain that there is something basically wrong with Earth Three."

Virginia smiled. "As a not-too-innocent bystander," she said seriously, "I'm little sold either way. Earth Two is doomed. That I know because I saw Earth One. But having been trained to the idea of scientific research, I'm inclined to think that Earth Three with its freedom is the right answer.

"Who knows," she continued bitterly, "how many times we might have been close to something that might have led the way to life but were stopped because of an arbitrary decision by someone who felt--by some personal logic--that the phase of science held no answer."

"There is one idea," he said half humorously, "that anything taken without a bit of moderation is not too good. Oh, there are exceptions. One can always find something that must not be taken in moderation--honesty or faith, for instance--in order for the best to evolve. But any pendulum swings from extreme to extreme. And you have been living in an order of one extreme. You naturally think the other extreme is better."

"You wouldn't be generalizing when you claim that Earth Three is wrong somewhere? That you think that Earth Three is too extreme?"

"Extremity, per se, may not be bad," he said. "It is what takes place under extremity that might be dangerous. No, Ginger, I'm baffled right now but you can be certain that, before we get to the end of all this, we'll know the answer."

Virginia smiled. "We seem to have come a long way from the original argument."

"Oh yes." He grinned back at her. "We're both in a mell of a hess right now. It would be a fine thing if we couldn't trust one another. All you seem to want is a secure future and all I want is the same. That we seem to think that this secure future lies in opposite directions is the same factor that makes horse racing interesting. And, like horse racing, we'll find out soon enough who is right."

"I hope it isn't the hard way."

"Virginia, you are willing to take a job on this stuff. You're therefore willing to help the side you think cannot win?"

"If anything is done to aid either side," she said, "and it comes out properly, isn't that a sign that the winning side has every right to succeed?"

"Defining 'A' in terms of 'A'?"

"No. I'm just willing to help get myself away from the certain doom of Earth One."

"In other words," said Ed Bronson, "you'd work as hard for Leader Kingston as you would for me?"

She looked at him squarely. "Ed," she said, "I wouldn't care to trust Leader Kingston." Then she turned from him, shrugged her shoulder out from beneath his hands and faced the upturned amplifier. Beneath the wreath of her hair he noted the blush that tinted the back of her neck.

Bronson took a half step forward. His hands half reached for her shoulders again. Then he paused.

"I'm going to check the mass spectrograph," he said and turned on his heel and left the room.

This, he knew, was no time to question her motives.

As he headed for the laboratory below, this thought crystallized. Questioning her motives would force quick judgment. He knew--and he wondered how he arrived at that sage opinion--that Virginia herself was not aware of the motives that made her keep him from a certain death and now caused her to help him.