Darla said, "What about the information, the data coming out of the cube? The Movement people who examined it discovered that."
"The chief told me that stray radiation is generated at the interface of the cube's surface and the outside world. It has something to do with virtual particle creation, which goes on everywhere in the universe all the time. I can't quite grasp the reason, but somehow when these particles pop into existence near the cube, they get real nervous and instead of blinking out of existence like good little virtual particles are supposed to, they stay real and fly out into the world as electronpositron pairs."
"Man, you lost me there," Carl said.
"Forget it," I said. "I don't understand it myself."
"Jake, I have other problems with this," Darla said. "How do you know that this cube and the first one are identical?"
"I don't, now," I said. "But if I do succeed in delivering this one back to T-Maze three months in the past, it will be identical. Because this cube will be the first cube. No?"
Darla sighed in resignation. "I guess." She frowned and shook her head. "But I still don't see how you could have created something when you didn't know exactly what that something was in the first place."
I took the cube back and tossed it into the air, caught it. It was feather light. What I couldn't figure was why it wasn't completely weightless. The design chief had told me it had something to do with "inertial drag" and the fact that the frozen energies holding the cube together possessed "mass equivalence."
"Well, let's put it this way," I said. "I didn't know anything. But I had some speculations about what the cube was. Everybody had them. Prime told us that it was `an experiment in the creation of a universe.' Don't ask me how he knew. I spilled all of this to the design chief, who is a creative mind. He took these ideas and kicked it around his circuits for a while and came up with a few ideas of his own. One of them turned out to be feasible. And the technical guys did it up for us. This is how the cube got created in the first place. This was its origin."
"If you say so," Darla said.
We got on the robocart for the trip back to the receiving bay.
"There's still a paradox," Darla stated as we got moving. "Where did the idea for the cube come from?"
"I told you," I said.
"No, I mean the reason it came to be. Its reason for existing at all. The first cube prompted the speculation, which generated the motivation to create this one. But you're saying that this one is the first one. So… so, you see, it's as if-"
"The cube created itself," I said.
"Yes! That's the only way you can look at it! It's impossible, Jake. Absolutely impossible."
"Have an impossibility," I said, handing it to her.
The plant foreman was sad to see us go. "You will return sometime soon? Our brief association has been most rewarding and gratifying."
"Sure, we'll come back," I told it, not wanting to hurt its feelings.
"When?"
"Uh…" Nothing like being put on the spot.
"Will you consider postponing your departure? All our various subsystems are most distressed over your leaving. Individuals of paramount creative powers, such as yourselves, are very rare. We are very desirous of continuing to work with you on other projects."
"Well, you're very kind, but we really must run along."
There was a sound not unlike a sigh. "Then please take our good wishes with you, and do return at your earliest convenience."
"Thank you. We will."
I wondered when the plant had last entertained visitors. Thousands; millions of years ago? It was cruel, in a way.
After Arthur had inflated the spacetime ship to full size, I shot the rig into the large cargo bay, and Carl tucked his Chevy into one of two smaller ones. We all boarded the craft. The illuminated spires and domes of the plant dwindled behind us as we sped toward the edge of the world, It was night on this face of Microcosmos, which Carl had dubbed "Fiipside." The moon surrogate rode low in the sky, and stars like diamonds on black velvet dotted the dome of night. Below, city complexes lay outlined in dim crosshatches, and a few stray lights glowed feebly in the dark countryside. A still, deserted world, Microcosmos was, eerie even by day, by night a place of silence and shadows and mystery. A chill went through me. Time was a thing of substance on this world, a weight bearing down like the stone mass of an ancient temple. I felt a sudden savage longing to get free of this place, this graveyard of the ages. It was dead here. There was death here. The world-disk flipped over as we swung around the edge, and seeing- Microcosmos in daylight again made me feel a little better. But not for long, because a reception committee was on its way to meet us.
"Oh, shit," Arthur said, frantically swiping at the control box.
Dozens of variously colored fiery motes were streaking up at us. Arthur put the ship into a steep climb, but in no time a swirling orange vortex-phenomenon was hard on our tail. The thing looked very familiar. Arthur began evasive maneuvers.
"Arthur," I said, trying to sound calm, "what do those things do?"
"Oh, they eat things," Arthur said airily. "Like spacetime ships. Ingests them, sort of. An explosive device can't do much damage to us, nor can any kind of beam weapon. But that thing can snare us and slowly disintegrate us. It has enough energy to do that."
I said, "Oh."
Horrified, I looked at Carl, remembering one of his Chevy's fantastic weapons, the enigma Carl called the "Tasmanian Devil." Carl swallowed hard and nodded.
I turned to Arthur. "Are these the things that chase their targets and never give up until they destroy them?"
"Yup. How did you know?"
"Uh… what are you going to do?"
"Well, there's only one thing I can do…" Arthur said. The thing behind us was gaining, matching our every increment of speed, growing until we could see its boiling interior, a fiercely glowing furnace of demonic combustion. There was a suggestion of something else in there, a shape, a mad, implacable figure, a howling psychotic beast bent only on destruction.
"… and I think I better do it now."
Instantaneously, everything around us disappeared-the Tasmanian Devil, the sky, Microcosmos itself. And in their place were endless stars, all around us.
We were in space.
"Dearie me," Arthur wailed, "I've really gone and done it now."
He was silent, slowly moving his thick, stunted fingers over the face of the control box.
"Arthur," I said after a long moment, "what's happened?"
"Oh, nothing. We made a continuum jump, which we shouldn't have done near such a large mass as a planet, especially Microcosmos, since it has very peculiar gravitational properties. We had no choice, but that doesn't help much."
"What's the problem?"
"Well, I have no idea where or when we are. None. It'll take time to get enough readings to make an educated guess. My uneducated guess is that we've jumped over ten billion light-years."
Standing beside me, Darla put both arms around my waist and pressed herself against me. I needed someone to hug, too; I snaked my arm about her shoulders and held her closer.
"Well, this is a bit of luck," Arthur said. "Star very near. Not only did we not wind up in the middle of intergalactic space, we blundered on to a likely planet-bearing star." He snorted. "It probably has a brood of grungy ice balls and gas giants orbiting it. No good to us." He sighed. "Better check it out, anyway."