«But you and your prototype here had roughly the same history. And, as you found out to your sorrow, you wrote the same stories once. And there are similarities between my master Dopelle here and a science-fiction fan named Doppelberg in your universe but they are not the same person.»
Keith thought slowly, «If there are infinite universes, then all possible combinations must exist. Then, somewhere, everything must be true. I mean, it would be impossible to write a fiction story, because no matter how wild it sounds that very thing must be happening somewhere. Is that true?»
«Of course it’s true. There is a universe in which Huckleberry Finn is a real person, doing the exact things Mark Twain described him as doing. There are, in fact, an infinite number of universes in which a Huckleberry Finn is doing every possible variation of what Mark Twain might have described him as doing. No matter what variation, major or minor, Mark Twain might have made in the writing of that book it would have been true.»
Keith Winton’s mind staggered a little. He said, «There are an infinite number of universes in which we—or our equivalents—are making Burton outfits to defeat attacking Arcturians? And in some of them we’ll succeed and in others we’ll fail?»
«Of course. And there are an infinite number of universes in which we don’t exist at all. In which the human race does not exist. There are an infinite number of universes in which flowers are the predominant form of life. Infinite universes in which—in which the states of existence are such that we have no words to describe them. All possible combinations must exist in infinity.
«There are an infinite number of universes in which you’re going to die in the next half hour, piloting a rocket against the monster ship from Arcturus.»
«What?»
«Of course. You’re going to ask to. It may get you back to your own universe. You want to get there. I can see it in your mind. Don’t ask me if you will succeed in this particular universe. I cannot read the future.»
Again Keith shook his head. There were still a million questions though he could figure the answers to some of them himself. But he asked another one first.
«Explain again, please, what happened. How I got here.»
«The moon rocket from your Earth must have fallen back and exploded—the Burton effect, that is. It isn’t exactly an explosion—when it struck Earth on L. A. Borden’s estate a few yards from you. There are peculiar properties to such an electrical flash. Burton didn’t know what he had. Anyone caught in it directly is not killed. He’s knocked into another universe.»
«How can you know that if the Burton effect is new here?»
«Partly by deduction from what happened to you, partly by analysis—deeper than was given it on your Earth—of the Burton formula. You’re here. Q. E. D. And, from your mind, I can see why out of an infinity of universes you landed in this particular one.»
«Why?»
«Because you were thinking about this particular universe at the instant the rocket struck. You were thinking about your science-fiction fan, Joe Doppelberg, and you were wondering what kind of a universe he would dream about, what kind he would like. And this is it.
«Analyze the differences and you’ll see they fit, all of them. You didn’t think this universe up, Keith Winton. It existed. It’s real. Any universe you might have been thinking of would have existed, ready for you to be blown into by the Burton flash.»
«I—understand,» Keith Winton said.
It answered a lot of things. Yes, this was the kind of universe Joe Doppelberg would have thought of and dreamed of—with a romanticized hero named Dopelle practically running it, saving it. It even answered a lot of little details.
Joe Doppelberg had been at the Borden office. He’d seen Betty Hadley and probably been smitten by her. And so here Betty was in love with Dopelle. Joe knew of Keith Winton, had corresponded with him and had a mental picture of him, so there was a Keith Winton here.
«But Joe hadn’t ever seen Keith Winton—he’d been out of New York the day of Joe’s call—so the physical picture wasn’t accurate. Joe had seen Borden, so Borden was here—but Joe didn’t know of Borden’s Greeneville estate and there hadn’t happened to be a Greeneville estate here.
«It all fitted—even to the improvement of the Bems on the covers of Surprising Stories—bug-eyed monsters with the subtle horror that Doppelberg demanded in them.
A crazy Earth with everyday automobiles—and space-ships, too. Black adventure at night on Manhattan Island—and intergalactic warfare. A Moon with air on it—and a super-marvelous mechanical brain as Dopelle had created it. Dopelle the super man, the only man who’d been to Arcturus and come back alive. Dopelle who was almost singlehanded saving the solar system.
Universe a la Doppelberg! It fitted—everything fitted. It had to be.
The men in the big room down below the balcony were now putting the finishing touches on the thing they were making—a thing of complicated coils that still somewhat resembled the pictures he’d seen once of a Burton potentiomotor. Apparently Mekky had finished his telepathed instructions to them.
Mekky floated up to the balcony now and hovered near Keith’s shoulder. In Keith’s mind, he said, «They’re installing it on a life-boat, a rocket-propelled craft. Someone must take the life-raft out and run it around a while until a tremendous charge is built up in the Burton apparatus. Then it will hover near the fleet until the monster ship from Arcturus materializes here to destroy us. They have the same space-drive we have.
«Then the life-raft must crash the monster. The Arc ship is inertialess. Any other ship we have can crash it without hurting it. Nothing in our armaments can touch it. It will blaze a path of death and destruction through the planets after it has destroyed our fleet. Unless the Burton apparatus—which is new to them as to us—can destroy it.»
«Can it, though?»
«You’ll know when you crash the life-raft into it. Yes, you will be given the privilege. Every man in the fleet would volunteer. Dopelle himself would love to do it but I talked him into letting you. I knew from your mind that you’d want to take the chance. It will—I believe—get you back to your own universe.
«The life-raft isn’t a raft, of course. That’s just a nickname for it. It’s a small rocket-propelled ship. You’ve never seen one. I shall implant knowledge of its operation in your mind before you enter it. And you know what to do before the crash.»
«What?»
«Concentrate on your own world. On a specific part of it; possibly on the very spot where you were a week ago when the moon rocket hit you. But not on that time, of course—upon that place in that universe, as of now.
«You don’t want to get back there just in time to be blown away again by the moon rocket’s landing. From there you can go to New York—the New York you know. And to Betty Hadley—your Betty Hadley.» Keith reddened a little. There was a disadvantage to having one’s mind read that thoroughly even by a mechanical brain.
The men were wheeling off the thing they had made.
«Will it take them long to install it in the rocket?» he asked.
«Only minutes. Relax now and close your eyes, Keith Winton. I’ll implant in your mind the knowledge of how to control a rocket-propelled craft.»
Keith Winton closed his eyes and relaxed …
The life-raft hovered, ten thousand miles out from Saturn. A thousand miles from the Earth fleet. Keith could see the fleet in his visiplate, hundreds of ships of all sizes, the might of the Solar System, yet helpless against the thing to come.