“You got to like these people?”
“I’m not sure just how much I liked them. Admired them, maybe. Felt sorry for them, maybe. They’re doing what they can. They hunted for so long to find someone they could pass the knowledge on to.”
“Pass it on? You said it was for sale.”
“Only because there is something that they want or need. I wish I could figure out what it is. It would make everything easier for everyone concerned.”
“Minor question-you talked with them. How did you go about it?”
“The tablets,” said Maxwell. “I told you about the tablets. The sheets of metal that carried information. They talked with me with tablets and I talked with them the same way.”
“But how could you read…”
“They gave me a contraption, like a pair of glasses, a pair of goggles, really, but bigger than a pair of goggles. It was a sort of bulky thing. I suppose it had a lot of mechanisms in it. I’d put it on and then I could read the tablets. No script, just little jiggles in the metal. It’s hard to explain. But you looked at the jiggles through the contraption that you wore and you knew what the jiggles said. It was adjustable, I found out later, so you could read the different atomic layers. But to start with, they only wrote me messages, if wrote is the word to use. Like kids writing back and forth to one another on slates. I wrote back to them by thinking into another contraption that was tied into the pair of goggles that I wore.”
“A translator,” said Gop.
“I suppose that’s what it was. A two-way translator.”
“We’ve tried to work one out,” said Oop. “By we I mean the combined ingenuity not only of the Earth, but of what we laughingly call the known galaxy.”
“Yes, I know,” said Maxwell.
“And these folks had one. These ghosts of yours.”
“They have a whole lot more,” said Maxwell. “I don’t know what they have. I sampled some of what they had. At random. Just enough to convince myself they had what they said.”
“One thing still bugs me,” said Oop. “You said a planet. What about the star.”
“The planet is roofed over. There was a star, I gather, but you couldn’t see it, not from the surface. The point is, of course, that there needn’t be a star. You are acquainted, I think, with the concept of the oscillating universe.”
“The yo-yo universe,” said Oop. “The one that goes bang, and then bang, bang again.”
“That’s right,” said Maxwell. “And now we can quit wondering about it. It happens to be true. The crystal planet comes from the universe that existed before the present universe was formed. They had it figured out, you see. They knew the time would come when all the energy would be gone and all the dead matter would start moving slowly back to form another cosmic egg, so that the egg could explode again and give birth to yet another universe. They knew they were approaching the death of the universe and that unless something were done, it would be death for them as well. So they launched a project. A planetary project. They sucked in energy and stored it-don’t ask me how they extracted it from wherever they extracted it or how they stored it. Stored somehow in the very material of the planet, so that when the rest of the universe went black and dead, they still had energy. They roofed the planet in, they made a house of it. They worked out propulsion mechanisms so they could move their planet, so that they would be an independent body moving independently through space. And before the inward drifting of the dead matter of the universe began, they left their star, a dead and blackened cinder by this time, and set out on their own. That’s the way they have been since then, a holdover population riding on a planetary spaceship. They saw the old universe die, the one before this one. They were left alone in space, in space that had no hint of life, no glint of light, no quiver of energy. It may be-I don’t know-that they saw the formation of the brand-new cosmic egg. They could have been very far from it and seen it. And if they saw it, they saw the explosion that marked the beginning of this universe we live in, the blinding flash, far off, that sent the energy streaking into space. They saw the first stars glow red, they saw the galaxies take shape. And when the galaxies had formed, they joined this new universe. They could go to any galaxy they chose, set up an orbit about any star they wished. They could move anytime they wanted to. They were universal gypsies. But the end is nearing now. The planet, I suppose, could keep on and on, for the energy machinery must still be operative. I imagine there might even be a limit to the planet, but they’re not even close to that. But the race is dying out and they have stored in their records the knowledge of two universes.”
“Fifty billion years,” said Oop. “Fifty billion years of learning.”
“At least that much,” said Maxwell. “It could be a great deal more.”
They sat, silent, thinking of those fifty billion years. The fire mumbled in the chimney’s throat. From far off came the chiming of the clock in Music Hall, counting off the time.
Maxwell awoke. Oop was shaking him. “Someone here to see you.” Maxwell threw back the covers, hoisted his feet out on the floor, groped blindly for his trousers. Oop handed them to him.
“Who is it?”
“Said his name was Longfellow. Nasty, high-nosed gent. He’s waiting outside for you. You could see he wouldn’t risk contamination by stepping in the shack.”
“Then to hell with him,” said Maxwell, starting to crawl back into bed.
“No, no,” protested Oop. “I don’t mind at all. I’m above insult. There is nothing that can faze me.” Maxwell struggled into his trousers, slid his feet into his shoes and kicked them on.
“Any idea who this fellow is?”
“None at all,” said Oop.
Maxwell stumbled across the room to the bench set against the wall, spilled water from the bucket standing there into a washbasin, bent and sloshed water on his face.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“A little after seven.”
“Mr. Longfellow must have been in a hurry to see me.”
“He’s out there now, pacing up and down. Impatient.”
Longfellow was impatient.
As Maxwell came out of the door, he hurried up to him and held out a hand.
“Professor Maxwell,” he said, “I’m so glad I found you. It was quite a job. Someone told me you might be here,” he glanced at the shack and his long nose crinkled just a trifle, “so I took the chance.”
“Oop,” said Maxwell, quietly, “is an old and valued friend.”
“Could we, perhaps, take a stroll,” suggested Longfellow. “It is an unusually fine morning. Have you breakfasted yet? No, I don’t suppose you have.”
“It might help,” said Maxwell, “if you told me who you are.”
“I’m in Administration. Stephen Longfellow is the name. Appointments secretary to the president.”
“Then you’re just the man I want to see,” said Maxwell. “I need an appointment with the president as soon as possible.”
Longfellow shook his bead. “I would say offhand that is quite impossible.”
They fell into step and walked along the path that led down toward the roadway. Leaves of wondrous, shining yellow fell slowly through the air from a thick-branched walnut tree that stood beside the path. Down by the roadway a maple tree was a blaze of scarlet against the blueness of the morning sky. And far in that sky streamed a V-shaped flock of ducks heading southward.
“Impossible,” said Maxwell. “You make it sound final. As if you’d thought about it and come to your decision.”
“If you wish to communicate with Dr. Arnold,” Longfellow told him coldly, “there are proper channels. You must understand the president is a busy man and…”
“I understand all that,” said Maxwell, “and I understand as well about the channels. Innumerable delays, a request passed on from hand to hand and the knowledge of one’s communication spread among so many people-”