“Take a look at that!” Buck exclaimed suddenly, pointing.
Clem swung. Then his mouth opened in surprise as he found himself gazing through an impenetrable wall, which had deflected the force-gun. There was a girl visible, strapped to a table, her eyes staring unseeingly, her pretty face terrified.
“She isn’t moving,” Buck whispered blankly. “Say, she looks as if she’s imprisoned inside a globe of force! Who on earth is she, anyway?” he went on in amazement. “Look at her clothes! Girls haven’t worn things like that for centuries!”
Clem’s mind switched instantly to the scientific implications. He prowled around the cavern, examining it carefully, the astounded engineers piling in after him and dazedly contemplating the girl in the globe.
At last Clem halted, rubbing his jaw. “Bits and pieces lying around suggest that this cavern was once a laboratory, but heaven knows how long ago. Even bits of iron and steel have rusted into ferrous oxide powder in the interval. Hundreds of years, maybe. What we’ve got to do is break down this globe of force somehow.”
“How?” Buck demanded. “If a blast gun won’t do it it’s certain nothing else will.”
Clem thought for a moment, and then answered: “If, as is probable, it was created artificially, it can be un-created.” He turned to the waiting men. “Okay, boys, do your job. We’ve still a time-schedule to keep, remember. “I’ll use instruments on this and see what I can find out.”
The ganger nodded and blasting resumed, cutting a vast path at the back of the place. Clem gave quick instructions and had various instruments brought in to him. He figured steadily from their readings, quite oblivious to the shattering din and human shouts going on around him. After a while Buck came to his side, hands on hips.
“Well?” His keen eyes aimed eager questions. “Any clues?”
“I think so, and most of them incredible.” Clem’s voice had a touch of awe in it. “It looks as though somebody way back in the past solved a scientific problem which still puzzles us even today. That globe, if the readings here are true, registers zero! It isn’t there!”
“Are you crazy, or am I?” Buck demanded. “Of course it’s there! We can see it!”
Clem motioned to the instruments. Sure enough they all registered zero. Clem gave a grim smile as he saw Buck rubbing the back of his beefy neck.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “And these instruments are the best that money can buy.”
“Surely. Nothing wrong with those.”
“Then what’s the explanation?”
“It’s something, as far as I can work out, that has no entropy. If that be so it means that it has reached absolute equilibrium. There is no interchange of energy to register. A little universe all on its own, which has achieved the state our own universe will one day attain. It is the same now, possibly, as when it came into being. For that very reason it is apart from all known forces. It is divorced from light, radiation, heat — everything. You see, it cannot assimilate anything more because it is assimilated to maximum. Nothing can go into the globe and nothing can come out of it.”
Buck was looking completely bewildered. “Then how do we smash it up? Or open it?”
“‘Only one thing we can perhaps do, and that is warp it. Gravitation alone is independent of all other forces. Today we know that for certain. Gravity is a warp in the space-time continuum: it is not a force, as such. Down here we have gravitator-plates for shifting rocks. Maybe twin stresses brought to focus would warp this ball of absolute force and cause a rupture. Yes, it’s worth trying!” Clem decided. “This is quite the weirdest thing I ever struck.”
He gave further instructions and gravitator-screens of vast size were erected in the positions he directed. A past-master in stresses and strains, he knew just what he was doing, whether it would work on the globe or not was problematical.
It was an hour before he was satisfied, Buck Cardew becoming more and more impatient at such painstaking thoroughness; but at last Clem was satisfied and raised his hand in a signal. Simultaneously the power was switched on, a power exactly duplicating the etheric warp of gravitation itself. What happened then none of the men could afterwards clearly remember.
The globe burst with an explosion that hurled the engineers flat against the wall, pinning them there under an out-flowing wave of gigantic, hair-bristling force. The screens overturned and went crashing against the rocks. A rumble as of deep thunder rolled throughout the underground cavern and died away in the far distance.
Slowly the sense of released electrical tension began to subside, leaving the cavern heavy with the smell of ozone. Clem stood up gradually, turned, expecting to see the girl blasted to pieces. But instead she was definitely alive and wriggling to free herself!
“…do this to me!” she cried desperately, straining at the straps.
“Not only alive, but fighting mad,” Buck whispered, seizing Clem’s arm and, staring at her. “Why didn’t she die when that thing blew up?”
“Because the force expanded outwards from her. She was as safe as though in the epicenter of a cyclone.”
Clem strode forward and gazed at the girl’s face. A most extraordinary expression came over her delicate features as she stared into the grimy visages under the steel helmets. Her dark-blue eyes widened in further alarm.
“What— Who are you?” she breathed weakly, going limp in the straps. “Where’s Bryce?”
“Bryce?” Clem gave her a baffled glance; then leaning forward he unbuckled the straps and raised the girl gently. He fished in his hip-pocket, spun the top from a flask with his teeth, then held the opening to the girl’s lips. The fiery liquid, something she had never tasted before, went through her veins like liquid dynamite, setting her heart and nerves bounding with vigorous life.
Flushed, breathing hard, she looked in bewilderment at the puzzled men.
“Where’s Bryce?” she demanded. “Bryce Fairfield. He locked me in here with the threat that he was going after Reggie.”
“Oh?” Clem tried not to look too vague. “Matter of fact, miss, I’ve never heard of Bryce — nor Reggie. That reminds me!” Clem broke off. “When you recovered a moment ago you said something. What was it?”
“I said: ‘Bryce, you can’t do this to me!’”
Clem shook his head. “No! You only said: ‘do this to me!’ There was no beginning to your sentence. I noticed at the time that it sounded odd. I assume this Bryce Fairfield was in here when you started your sentence?”
“Yes — yes, of course he was. He was going to throw a power-switch which would have.…” Lucy’s voice trailed off as she gazed around the cavern and at the unfamiliar blasting equipment. “Everything’s different,” she faltered. “There’s no switchboard now, and no door.… Tell me, who are you?”
When none of the men answered Lucy’s gaze swung to the calendar, or at least to the place where it should have been. There was only a mass of crumpled rock. She gave a gasp.
“There was a calendar there!” she cried. “It said seventeenth of August, two thousand and nine. Where’s it gone?”
“Two thousand and nine!” Buck Cardew exclaimed. “Hell! No wonder you’re dressed in such old-fashioned clothes!”
“Old-fashioned?” Lucy’s voice caught a little as she looked down at herself. “But how can they be? It’s still two thousand and nine, isn’t it?”
Nobody answered. Grim looks passed between the men.
“Well, isn’t it?” she cried, nearly in tears; then Clem put a gentle arm about her shoulders.
“Better hang on to yourself, miss,” he said gravely. “This is the year 3004 A.D.”
All trace of colour drained from the girl’s face. She half tried to smile and then went serious again. She was obviously utterly stunned.