Chapter III: Earth Three

Harry Maddox turned from his laboratory table as the tall, dark man entered. Maddox greeted the taller man obsequiously, but the other's reply was curt.

"They've done it, you say?" asked Kingston.

"They've done it," replied Maddox gloatingly.

"That proves it then," replied Kingston with interest. "Though it has always been a common enough theory."

"Within the past thirty-six hours," said Maddox, "there have been two transmissions. The latter one is now going on. Want to hear it?"

"Not particularly," replied Kingston. "It will be recorded for my leisure."

"Yes," nodded Maddox. His nod was toward a rather attractive girl, who was riding herd on a large wire recorder. From time to time she would reach out and adjust the volume of the recording. Over long blond hair she wore earphones to monitor the conversation directly. Kingston made a mental note that he could trust Maddox to adorn his laboratory and workshop with the most attractive human decor that he could find.

Instead of commenting on this he smiled in amusement and continued to speak. "Rather dramatic, isn't it?"

Maddox nodded. "Thirty years to the moment. That Alamogordo affair had three possibilities. It could either have gone off normally--it could have started an atomic fire in the earth--or it could have fizzled. And so, thirty years later, the three temporal possibilities are meeting."

"No, my dear Maddox," said Kingston with the air of a savant correcting a student who was not too careful of his facts. "Just two of them. We sit by--remember?"

"I know," said Maddox, rebuffed.

"Remember--and never for a moment forget--that the possibility of the Alamogordo bomb starting an atomic fire in the earth was a remote possibility. That means that the tensors which maintain that line of temporal advancement are very shaky.

"Time, you know, consists of following the Laws of Least Reaction, which simply means that in any reaction wherein a number of possibilities occur, that which will happen with the least energy will take place. This is statistically true, and need not hold for specific instances.

"Now," Kingston went on, enjoying his role of lecturer even though Maddox fiddled impatiently because he knew it all beforehand--and besides, the blonde was half-listening, though alert on her recording job. "Be it always remembered that the chances of the Alamogordo Bomb being a fizzle were as remote as the other case.

"Ergo, Maddox, our own world hangs on a slender thread of reality. We have as much need to escape from this time-slot as they whose earth is burning with atomic fire. For only in the time-slot where the Alamogordo Bomb behaved according to principle are the time-tensors heavy enough to maintain it."

"Yes, your Excellency," replied Maddox.

Kingston nodded. "You are a lucky fellow, Maddox. I came as soon as I could get away. I shall remain here until we can go through and take over."

"Sir, a question." Maddox knew that he must use deference at least until Kingston climbed down from his tall horse. "What happens when, as and if they start an atomic fire in Earth One?"

"They cannot, save by sheer chance of almost impossible mathematical odds," said Kingston. "Besides, they hope to move in--or will as soon as they learn the truth. No man burns the home he hopes to own in the near future."

"But what will happen?" asked Maddox. "That expectation is far too deep for me to follow."

"Men--all men--are inclined to feel sorry for the trapped," said Kingston. "In some cultures their sorrow is shown by killing the trapped to remove them from their misery. In other cultures, the trapped are aided even though they may eventually turn against their liberators. Once the truth is known to both worlds, those who are in Earth One will be moved to aid the trapped ones in Earth Two.

"We shall aid them as we did before by transmitting to Earth One more samples of the space-resonant radioisotope to contaminate their scientific works. There will be a gaudy search for them once the truth is known, you know. Anyway, those on Earth One will undoubtedly admit the trapped ones from Earth Two."

* * * * *

Maddox shrugged. "No dice, yet."

"Don't be stupid. Those on Earth Two are a race faced with death. They'll send through their mutants, their death-dealing types first. That will decimate Earth One and leave Earth One in the hands of Earth Two. Follow?"

"So far, yes. But where do we come in?"

"We come in shortly. Ninety percent of those remaining on Earth Two are mutants from the atomic fire or considerably older than thirty. The ninety are almost certain to be--if not sterile--then not cross-fertile with the rest of the mutant race. Each will have gone mutant in some fashion different from his fellow.

"All we need do then is to sit and wait until the race dies out--another thirty or forty years. Or, better, depending on the circumstances following the eventual battle, we go to war. We shall win, for our people have not lost much. At any rate we're permitting Earth Two to do our cleaning-up for us."

"Unless--" began Maddox, then paused. He knew that if he advanced a theory unasked it would be scorned. However, were he to make some leading statement and then disavow it unuttered Kingston would demand that he complete it whether he thought it right or wrong.

Kingston did, which was an excellent proof of the theory that it is a good thing to know the nature of your fellow man. "Unless what?" demanded Kingston.

"It was but an idle thought. Who fights more fiercely--he who has lost his home and fights for another or he who protects himself from the one who would dispossess him?"

Kingston laughed nastily. "Little difference," he said. "This is rigged so that no matter what, a fight will ensue. It is always easy to lick the survivor of a tough battle."

Maddox shrugged. "Just remember that you're not fighting aliens, but you--our--own kind!"

Kingston nodded. "That," he said succinctly, "is why I know them so well."

* * * * *

Cauldron looked at his watch. "Two hours," he said. "Time enough?"

Virginia looked concerned. "He didn't state whether he'd been asleep lately," she said.

"Unless he's a complete screwball, he'll work days and sleep nights," observed Moray. "Even supposing he works at home, he'll be arising about noon at the latest and hitting the hay about three-odd. Excepting when something was really in the fire like this receiver of his. I predict that he hit the sheets after we closed and is now pounding the pillow at a fine rate of speed."

Virginia smiled uncertainly, turning back from her communicating equipment. "He doesn't answer," she said.

"Can you locate his phosphor?" demanded Cauldron.

"I have."

"Then try," snapped Moray. "Aid! Help!" he sneered, "We're in the way of losing our very lives, and what we need, we take!"

Cauldron nodded. "Moray--you first. If Bronson is still in evidence clip him. If not we'll go ahead and do whatever is necessary. We can't take too long. After all--"

Moray nodded. "Ready, Virginia?"

"Ready."

Virginia worked over another bit of equipment in her laboratory. Moray walked over easily, smoking a last cigarette leisurely until Virginia turned to him.

"The focal volumes are resonant," she said. Then Moray seated himself in the chair before the equipment and, as Virginia started the machine, it began to transmit Pete Moray from one world to the other.

* * * * *

It was not especially spectacular. No flashing lights or flowing aurae of color. Moray's body, still breathing, still living, began to be less solid. At one time Moray lit another cigarette.

A bit of the cigarette smoke entered Ed Bronson's laboratory. The amount was that percentage of the transmission that had been accomplished.

There, before the big kinescope tube in Bronson's laboratory, the air was beginning to show the vague outlines of a figure, seated on a chair. This figure thickened gradually as the random atoms in Moray's body passed over.

A half hour passed and Virginia told Cauldron that the transmission should be about half complete. Moray's body could be seen through faintly--not that any of the internal organs were visible but as if he were a wraith.

Then the halfway point came. The floor in Bronson's laboratory was lower than the floor in Virginia Carlson's laboratory--with respect to their transmitters and receivers--and Moray and his chair dropped several feet on both sides. Moray seemed to be unmindful of the fact that the hard floor of Virginia's laboratory was about where his stomach was.

A half hour later, there was little of Moray left on Earth Two. Most of him was on Earth One!

As the final molecules came through the space resonator Moray heard a noise. Frantic, he turned to see but could do nothing until the last of him was complete. The noise resolved itself to footsteps, and then the door opened and Ed Bronson strode in.

"Smoke--" he mumbled sleepily, then, "--who the heck are you!"

Moray was complete. He leaped to his feet and clipped Bronson viciously with the side of his hand. Bronson dropped, stunned, dazed, but not unconscious. Deftly, Moray found a roll of tape, bound Bronson's ankles and wrists, slapped a bit of tape across his mouth.

"Aid?" sneered Moray. "Promise us aid, all right. Fifty years will pass while the idea is being thrashed out in Congress or in whatever international organization there is here. Behave, Bronson, and you'll live. Help us--understand? If you don't it's--" Moray drew a forefinger across his throat.

Another figure started to form--vague and indistinct--and Moray lifted the taped man across his shoulders, carried him upstairs, dumped him across his bed and left him there.

When he returned to the laboratory, Virginia was beginning to solidify. Moray seated himself and waited, smoking Bronson's cigarettes and fortifying himself with a drink of Bronson's liquor. Moray smiled, but his humor was bitter.

How to marshal an army? It took an hour to get one person through--to pass the six or seven million still living in Earth Three would at this rate take six or seven million hours--a mere eight hundred years if you didn't bother with the extra leap-year days or take Christmas off.

* * * * *

Time passed slowly and it was the full hour before Virginia came through completely and arose from her chair.

"Collect Bronson or kill him?" she asked.

"I should have killed him," said Moray.

"Not at all," replied Virginia. "Even though this is quite similar to our world remember that thirty years of time separate us--and thirty years each of divergent development. We need someone to show us our way around."

Moray shrugged. "He might guess about this factor?"

Virginia shook her head. "No," she said with finality. "He's just beginning to think about the space resonator. Look at that pile of haywire junk! He's downright dumbfounded at the idea of communicating over a lump of electron-bombarded radioisotopic compound.

"To consider the transmission of matter from one volume of focus to another is an idea beyond concept. And--no doubt--radioisotopes aren't dished out as easily here as they are back there."

"Here, there, whither?" grinned Moray. "Let's call this Earth One because it is going to be here long after Earth Two has dissolved in atomic flame."

"Okay. So we've got this station first. We've got to get enough radioisotopic phosphor passed around Earth One to make wholesale passage possible. You run this station, Moray, and I'll stand by to act as a front."

Moray looked at Virginia closely. Slender, blonde and possessed of an ethereal and almost violent beauty, her personality and looks could and would forestall much idle questioning. He nodded.

"You keep out of sight of Friend Bronson," he said. "It might be handy to have you for a--a face card."

Virginia grinned....

Ed Bronson had a splitting headache and a crying pain in every muscle. He had been lying motionless. It was all he could do against the adhesive-taping job done by Peter Moray. His tongue was thick and furry and his very soul cried for water. He could make no sound for the tape covered his mouth.

Angrily, and resentfully, Bronson's temper flared. He set his muscles against the tape about his wrists and strained. He tried the tape about his ankles. Both were wound many times with the heavy tape which would not be torn.

A twisting strain succeeded only in abrading his skin until the flesh was raw and bleeding. With fading hope he prayed that the blood would soften the tape and thought about rubbing himself raw even more so that the further flow of blood might aid.

He gave that up when he saw that the tape was of the waterproof variety. All the soaking in the world would do little good.

He rolled from the bed onto the floor, easing the thud by dropping taped feet first and then angling to knees, turning to land on his buttocks and then unfolding as gently as he knew how. He made it with no undue effort. Then he rolled across the floor to the door and, turning, he caught the hinge-butt under the tape at his wrists where tape and wrists made a small triangle.

After many minutes, Bronson succeeded in weakening the tape and then, hooking the tape firmly over the hinge, he tore it loose. To remove the tape from his mouth and from his ankles was but a moment's work and then Ed Bronson was free to act!

Quietly, he dressed. Then, using the utmost stealth, he stole down the stairs and out onto the street. It was midmorning.

Nodding amicably to Lewis McManner, who scowled back across the street, Ed Bronson headed for police headquarters.