'Shut off the current!'
The current clicked off; the mercury-vapor lamp went out; the shades were parted and the two stared at each other nervously.
'What was it?'
Haridin shook his head. 'I don't know. It was something definitely insane. I never saw anything like it.'
'You never saw an imaginary in a reaction equation before, either, did you? As a matter of fact, I don't think that expanding field was any known form of energy at -'
His breath came out in one long whistling exhalation and he retreated slowly from the tank containing the squid. The mollusc was motionless, but around it half the fern in the tank hung sere and withered.
Haridin gasped. He pulled the shades and in the gloom, the globe of glowing haze bulked through half the tank. Little curving tentacles of light reached toward the remaining fern and one pulsing thread extended through the glass and was creeping along the table.
That fright in Ranin's voice rendered it a cracked, scarcely-understood sound.
'It's a lag reaction. Didn't you test it by Wilbon's Theorem?'
'How could I?' The other's heart pumped madly and his dry lips fought to form words. 'Wilbon's Theorem didn't make sense with an imaginary in the equation. I let it go.'
Ranin sped into action with feverish energy. He left the room and was back in a moment with a tiny, squealing, squirrel-like animal from his own lab. He dropped it in the path of the thread of light stealing along the table, and held it there with a yard rule.
The glowing thread wavered, seemed to sense the presence of life in some horribly blind way, and lunged toward it. The little rodent squealed once, a high-pitched shriek of infinite torture, and went limp. In two seconds it was a shriveled, shrunken travesty of its former self.
Ranin swore and dropped the rule with a sudden yell, for the thread of light - a bit brighter, a bit thicker - began creeping up the wood toward him.
'Here,' said Haridin, 'let's end this!' He yanked a drawer open and withdrew the chromium-plated Tonite gun within. Its sharp thin beam of purple light lunged forward toward the squid and exploded in blazing, soundless fury against the edge of the sphere of force. The psychologist shot again and again, and then compressed the trigger to form one continuous purple stream of destruction that ceased only when power failed.
And the glowing sphere remained unharmed. It engulfed the entire tank. The ferns were brown masses of death.
'Get the Board,' yelled Ranin. 'It's beyond us entirely!'
There was no confusion - humanoids in the mass are simply not subject to panic, if you don't count the half-genius, half-humanoid inhabitants of the planets of Sol - and the evacuation of the University grounds was carried out smoothly.
'One fool,' said old Mir Deana, ace physicist of Arcturus U., 'can ask more questions than a thousand wise men can answer.' He fingered his scraggly beard and his button nose sniffed loudly in disdain.
'What do you mean by that?' questioned Frian Obel sharply. His green Vegan skin darkened angrily.
'Just that, by analogy, one cosmic fool of a psychologist can make a bigger mess than a thousand physicists can clear up.'
Obel drew in his breath dangerously. He had his own opinion of Haridin and Ranin, but no lame-brain psysicist could -
The plump figure of Qual Wynn, university president, came charging down upon them. He was out of breath and spoke between puffs.
'I've gotten in touch with the Galactic Congress and they're arranging for evacuation of all Eron, if necessary.' His voice became pleading. 'Isn't there anything that can be done?'
Mir Deana sighed, 'Nothing - yet! All we know is this: the squid is emitting some sort of pseudo-living radiatory field which is not electromagnetic in character. Its advance cannot be stopped by anything we have yet tried, material or vacuum. None of our weapons affect it, for within the field the ordinary attributes of space-time apparently don't hold.'
The president shook a worried head. 'Bad, bad! You've sent for Porus, though?' He sounded as though he were clutching at a last straw.
'Yes,' scowled Frian Obel. 'He's the only one that really knows that squid. If he can't help us, no one can.' He stared off toward the gleaming white of the university buildings, where the grass over half the campus was brown stubble and the trees blasted ruins.
'Do you think,' said the president, turning to Deana once more, 'that the field can span interplanetary space?'
'Sizzling novae, I don't know what to think!' Deana exploded, and he turned pettishly away.
There was a thick silence of utter gloom.
Tan Porus was sunk in deep apathy. He was unaware of the brilliant coruscations of color overhead. He didn't hear a sound of the melodious tones that filled the auditorium.
He knew only one thing - that he had been talked into attending a concert. Concerts above all were anathema to him, and in twenty years of married life he had steered clear of them with a skill and ease that only the greatest psychologist of them all could have shown. And now -
He was startled out of his stupor by the sudden discordant sounds that arose from the rear.
There was a rush of ushers to the exit where the disturbance originated, a waving of protesting uniformed arms and then a strident voice: 'I am here on urgent business direct from the Galactic Congress on Eron, Arcturus. Is Tan Porus in the audience?'
Tan Porus was out of his seat with a bound. Any excuse to leave the auditorium was nothing short of heaven-sent.
He ripped open the communication handed him by the messenger and devoured its contents. At the second sentence, his elation left him. When he was finished, he raised a face in which only his darting green eyes seemed alive.
'How soon can we leave?'
'The ship is waiting now.'
'Come, then.'
He took one step forward and stopped. There was a hand on his elbow.
'Where are you going?' asked Nina Porus. There was hidden steel in her voice.
Tan Porus felt stifled for a moment. He foresaw what would happen. 'Darling, I must go to Eron immediately. The fate of a world, of the whole galaxy perhaps, is at stake. You don't know how important it is. I tell you -'
'All right, go! And I'll go with you.'
The psychologist bowed his head.
'Yes, dear!' he said. He sighed.
The psychological board hemmed and hawed as one man and then stared dubiously at the large-scale graph before them.
'Frankly, gentlemen,' said Tan Porus, 'I don't feel too certain about it myself, but - well, you've all seen my results, and checked them too. And it is the only stimulus that will yield a canceling reaction.'
Frian Obel fingered his chin nervously. 'Yes, the mathematics is clear. Increase of hydrogen-ion activity past pH3 would set up a Demane's Integral and that- But listen, Porus, we're not dealing with space-time. The math might not hold - perhaps nothing will hold.'
'It's our only chance. If we were dealing with normal space-time, we could just dump in enough acid to kill the blasted squid or fry it with a Tonite. As it is, we have no choice but to take our chances with -'
Loud voices interrupted him. 'Let me through, I say! I don't care if there are ten conferences going on!'
The door swung open and Qual Wynn's portly figure made its entrance. He spied Porus and bore down upon him. 'Porus, I tell you I'm going crazy. Parliament is holding me, as university president, responsible for all this, and now Deana says that-' He sputtered into silence and Mir Deana, standing composedly behind him, took up the tale.
'The field now covers better than one thousand square miles and its rate of increase is growing steadily. There seems to be no doubt now that it can span interplanetary space if it wishes to do so - interstellar as well, if given the time.'
'You hear that? You hear that?' Wynn was fairly dancing in his anxiety. 'Can't you do something? The galaxy is doomed, I tell you, doomed!'