Chapter XV: Moment of Crisis

Grinning wolfishly, Bronson spoke.

"The next problem," he said, "is the job of getting back to Earth One."

"How can we?"

"Who has the key?" Bronson asked.

"Kingston."

"Then we proceed to grab Leader Kingston and apply bamboo splinters under the fingernails or place a rat on his bare tummy, placing a bowl on top of the rat, and then building a small fire on top of the bowl. In other words, we shall--ah--urge is the word--urge him to reveal his method of getting in touch with his bunch on Earth One."

Virginia shuddered.

Bronson turned to the steering controls and located Kingston. Then, standing near the focal volume, Bronson motioned for the girl to throw the switch. Kingston appeared instantly and, before the Leader could get his wits together, Ed Bronson swung a heavy fist with all the power of his big body behind it. Kingston went down like a log.

He awakened to the drenching of cold water from a bucket. He strained against adhesive tape and glared.

"Take it easy, Kingston," said Bronson. "I've got the controls set to drop you into the Alamogordo Flame if you get nasty."

Kingston paled.

"What I want from you is the key to Earth One!"

"That you'll never get!"

"Yes I will."

"No you won't."

Bronson snorted. "Want to make a little bet? You can save yourself a lot of grief if you give in right now. Or would you rather be screaming for mercy later?"

"What can you do?" sneered Kingston.

Bronson chuckled. "The Chinese are accused of developing a number of fancy tortures," he said. "I've also known a fiction writer who used an incident to show the strength of his character's will power.

"This fellow, who used to tinker with radio on the side, decided that any man who could grab a couple of hundred volts and not quiver a muscle because a sudden motion would be as deadly, would be displaying a nervous control seldom realized. Now I'd guess his idea to have been impossible. But it gives me to think.

"Do you suppose you could stand a mild electrocution? Say a hundred volts at twenty cycles? Not enough to kill, for we'll insert a current-limiting resistance to prevent electrocution, but enough to make life most uncomfortable. The torture of the condemned will have nothing on what you will suffer, Kingston."

Kingston smiled wearily. "It will do you no good," he said. "The thing is set up like the time lock on a safety vault. No one can breach it."

"Big talk," snorted Bronson. He turned from the bound man and rummaged in a bench drawer for wire and parts. A variable-voltage transformer, some alternating current meters and a few lengths of wire were strewn over the table top. Bronson began to connect them into a circuit.

"We'll find out how your resistance is," he told Kingston over his shoulder.

Kingston laughed nastily, Virginia screamed. Bronson whirled--and Kingston was gone!

Bronson leaped to the viewer controls and spun the dial to Kingston's official quarters. The viewer showed a technician just in the act of spinning the steering dials in a random whirl like a man locking a combination safe.

Kingston fell a-sprawl, still bound, against Maddox, who had come with him. Maddox removed the bonds and Kingston fingered the amulet on his wrist with pride. "That was quick," he said.

"Had to be," said Maddox. "I knew that the instant you disappeared from Bronson's laboratory he'd leap to the viewer to see your laboratory. So once you arrived, we both came here and Tony spun the dials so that Bronson can't follow us by reading the calibration."

"That isn't all," chuckled Kingston. "Now we know how to reach Bronson!"

* * * * *

Bronson turned from the controls unhappily. "How did he do that?" he asked plaintively.

Virginia shook her head. "Wrong culture or no," she said, "Earth Three seems to take all the tricks."

Bronson nodded wearily. He put head in hands and worried visibly--and was taken out of it when a bell tinkled on the wall. Bronson leaped to his feet with a shout.

"Maybe we're not licked yet," he said. "That was the automatic mass spectro-analyzer."

He left the room and returned quickly with a sheaf of papers.

"They call 'em space-resonant," he said with a wry chuckle, "but I call 'em symbiotic."

"Meaning?"

"Why, it seems as though we have a closed system of radioactivity here," he said.

"But the space-resonant elements are only faintly radioactive," objected Virginia.

"According to outside detectors," he said. "But this is an internally closed system. There are two basic elements and two isotopes of each, all operating in a closed system."

"How?"

He handed her a sheet of paper containing nuclear equations.

1.) 121^{A^(279)} + 0^{n^1} ----> 121^{A^(280)}

2.) 121^{A^(280)} - 1^{e^0} ----> 122^{B^(280)}

3.) 122^{B^(280)} - 0^{n^1} ----> 122^{B^(279)}

4.) 122^{B^(279)} + 1^{e^0} ----> 121^{A^(279)}

"Call 'em 'A' and 'B', with respective atomic number of one hundred and twenty-one and one hundred and twenty-two and respective atomic weights of two hundred and seventy-nine and two hundred and eighty," he explained. "Then Element A absorbs a neutron, becoming heavy Element A since its atomic weight is increased by one.

"The heavy Element A then emits a negative electron which raises the nuclear charge by one and the element becomes Element B. Element B then emits a neutron which makes it light Element B.

"Light Element B captures an electron lowering the nuclear charge and retransmuting the element back to normal Element A. The neutrons and electrons are passed back and forth within the mass and seldom escape, therefore the space-resonant elements are believed to be only mildly radioactive."

"Yes?"

Miles away and across the barrier in time Kingston and Maddox listened avidly.

"So we can guess what happened at Alamogordo," said Bronson exultantly.

"I don't see it," she said.

"Well, Element A is so avid an absorber of neutrons that a microscopic impurity will destroy the K-factor of a supercritical mass of plutonium or uranium," he said. "That would prevent the Alamogordo Bomb from exploding."

"Element B, on the other hand, emits a torrent of neutrons, enough to raise the K-factor to a terribly high degree, which caused such violence that the bomb was hot enough to start fission in the earth. A balance of the elements A and B cancels out and therefore we have the normal explosion experienced in Earth One."

"But how did it happen?"

"When the subcritical masses of uranium came together on Alamogordo Day, the fission started throughout the mass. Also present--we know now--is the capture of neutrons by unfissioned atoms which raise the element's mass, and the other fission products hitting this element raise its charge. Space-resonant elements resulted in those sub-microseconds of initial fission.

"So, in one section of the mass, an abundance of Element A was produced, which stopped the explosion. In another section, Element B was produced, which increased its violence. Now the energies produced within the fissioning bomb are high enough to cause a warp in the space-time continuum. This warp permitted one section to die out while the other increased almost without limit."

"I'm beginning to understand," nodded Virginia. "We then had three different levels of energy."

"And three widely-varied levels of entropy," added Bronson. "So widely varied that they could not exist in the same time-space plane. Thus the fission in time that produced the three time-planes. How widespread these areas of separation extend we may never know.

"All I can assume is that space-time is strained and will return as soon as the energy put into the separation is used up. Sort of like an upthrown stone," he mused. "It goes up until the energy put into throwing it is used up against the force of gravity.

"Then it comes down--and the three time-planes separate until the energy put into the separation was used up and then they begin to fall toward one another."

Kingston turned to Maddox. "That also explains why no one knew of this split for so long. And why it is getting easier and easier to cross the barrier. The three time-planes are approaching one another."

Maddox nodded. "And that means that we must see the other time-planes destroyed. If they come together and find interference--all will die!"

"Right," said Kingston. His hand fingered the button while his other hand turned the steering control. Maddox looked into the viewer. "Hurry!" he exploded. Kingston looked.

Ed Bronson was walking across the laboratory toward the transmission panel, saying "... and that brings one thing to mind, Ginger. If they grabbed Kingston they know where we are!"

He spun the controls quickly and pressed the button. At the same instant Kingston pressed his own button. The viewplate that showed Bronson and Virginia in Maddox's laboratory erupted in a holocaust of flame that blinded Kingston and Maddox.

"Did we?" asked Kingston, rubbing his eyes.

"We can't know," said Maddox. "But look. If we got them we can find out."

"How?"

"Collect your space-resonant elements on Earth One," said Maddox. "Then send another set across and use one of them to erupt Central City--right where Bronson's home is."

"What good will that do?" asked Kingston.

"We can watch it," explained Maddox. "And if it is returned to Earth Two, we'll know that Bronson is alive somewhere and watching."

Kingston nodded with a smile of appreciation.

* * * * *

The laboratory building was askew, its windows shattered and its outer surface scarred. It had been close. Perhaps the only thing that saved them was the fact that they were closer to the focal volume of the transmitter in the laboratory than Kingston was.

At any rate the unbelievably microscopic instant of the beginning of the atomic flame intended to destroy them utterly had been all that building caught. For Bronson had sent it skirling into time-space and it was on the way out as the glimmering of deadly flame started to come in.

But that brief touch of incandescent death had charred the woodwork of the outside of the building. It had cracked the glass and it had jarred its very structure.

The inhabitants were in bad shape. Bronson was sprawled on the floor. Virginia was crumpled over a desk. Both were unconscious. And, creeping deeper into their skin, was the ruddy color of bad burn.

Hours later they were dark with burn and still unconscious. They knew nothing.

They did not know that Kingston's men on Earth One were beginning to assemble the masses in Ed Bronson's collection of radioisotopic phosphor.

Then a bell tinkled gently. Bronson stirred and groaned. The bell tinkled once more. Bronson stirred again--painfully. Another tinkle--

Virginia awakened, opened her eyes vaguely and wondered what had happened.

The bell rang insistently. "Ed--Ed Bronson!" she shouted. "The detector!"

"Detector?" he asked dully.

"They're assembling the space-resonant elements on Earth One!"

The bell broke into an insistent clamoring. Ed picked himself from the floor and looked at the gear. The cascaded amplifiers, incapable of detecting the presence of subcritical masses on Earth One, had sufficient gain to trigger the alarm when Earth One's bits of space resonant elements were collected into critical mass.

Bronson spun the dials of the viewer.

There before him was the familiar laboratory of his own home and four men standing before his bench, upon which stood the crystalline mass.

"Now!" breathed Ed Bronson.