BEFORE THE UNIVERSE

  “Before the Universe” was the first story Cyril and I published in collaboration. I published it myself, and watched the reader mail with considerable apprehension when the story hit the stands; we weren’t very sure of ourselves. But the response was good. That was all we needed. We sat right down and wrote a sequel, “Nova Midplane,” and then a third story in the series, “The Extrapolated Dimwit”

  Unfortunately, by the time we came to the third story we discovered we were running out of things to say about our characters, and so we had to have help. In the Fulurian way, we solved the problem by inviting in a Third collaborator, Robert W. Lowndes, better known then as “Doc.”

  Lowndes had been a fan as long as any of us, but mostly by correspondence. It was the time of the Great Depression. Most of us were young enough to be sheltered by our families from the harsher aspects of that long deep sickness of the thirties, but Lowndes was all by himself in the world. He had to earn a living any way he could, and one of the ways was by working in a hospital in Connecticut (Whence the “Doc.”) We knew each other almost entirely by correspondence for several years, during which time I remember that he introduced me to J. K Huysmans and I introduced him to J. B. Cabell (we didn’t only read SF, you know), before things healed enough for him to visit, then move to, New York City. He became a resident of The primitive Futurian communes (dull, drugless, all-male pads that they were) pursued his writing, ultimately achieved every fan’s dearest dream by getting a Job as a professional editor (Future Fiction, Science Fiction Quarterly and others) and has continued as one ever since. “The Extrapolated Dimwit” was first published in one of his magazines.

  I. The Nobel Prize Twins

  Jocelyn Earle was listening closely to her employer’s instructions. That was one of the things about Jocelyn; she always listened closely, even if she paid no attention to suggestions once she stopped listening and started doing. He was telling her how to get the story he wanted for the Helio; he knew she would get the story her own way, but he told her anyway. The important thing was, she would get the story.

  “Do you know anything at all about Clair and Gaynor?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, you’re the only one in the world who doesn’t. Don’t you ever read the papers?” She shook her head. He sighed and went on. “They are the Nobel Prize winners for the last half-dozen years. They’re the ones who wiped out cancer, made possible the beam-transmission of power, created about fifty new alloys that have revolutionized industry, and originated the molecular-stress theory which is the cornerstone of the new physics.

  “Gaynor is the kid of the pair. He’s the one that never went to grade school, completed high school in eighteen months, and had a Ph.D. by the time he was fifteen. A child prodigy. Unlike most of those, he never burnt out. He’s still going stronger than ever.

  “Clair is the older and not quite so bright. He was almost old enough to vote by the time he brought out his thesis on Elementary Arithmetic (Advanced), which is a little bit harder to master than vector analysis. But, as I say, he’s older than Gaynor, and he’s had a chance to learn a lot more. So I guess you could say that they’re about even, mentally.

  “Now, this is what I want: the complete and exclusive story of what they’re working on now. It won’t be easy, because they don’t want to give out any information. And they’re smart enough to be able to keep a secret for a long, long time. That’s why I want you to take the job. I wouldn’t think of giving it to anybody else on the staff.”

  Jocelyn smiled. “I’m smart too. Is that what you mean?”

  “Sure you’re smart. Maybe, even, you’re smart enough to get the story…. Oh, one more thing. They’re both a little childish in some ways. They have a habit of playing practical jokes on people. Don’t let them joke you out of the story.”

  “I won’t,” said Jocelyn Earle. “That’s all?” she asked, rising.

  “That’s enough, isn’t it?” her employer said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. But don’t worry about it—I’ll try to have the story by deadline tomorrow. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” said her employer, and Jocelyn Earle walked out of the room….

  “And there goes another tube, Art,” called Gaynor. “Shot to hell.”

  Clair walked over to the meter board with a sigh, stripping off his gloves as he came. “The damn things act so funny. They test fine, no flaws, and the math says they ought to work. But you shoot the juice into them, and all that’s left when the smoke clears away is a thoroughly ruptured tube. Why do you suppose that is, Paul?”

  He got no answer from Gaynor but a strangling gasp. He looked up to find his colleague pointing at the door, his face a mask of horror. There stood a hideous creature, presumably female, apparently Scandinavian. “Ay bane call from de agency,” it said. Gaynor recovered himself first, and asked,

  “How the hell did you get through seven locked doors, woman? What do you want?”

  The creature began to talk rapidly and excitedly, and the two scientists looked at each other. “This is just like the Nobel ceremony,” howled Clair over the woman’s voice. “What do you suppose she’s saying?”

  “Haven’t the faintest notion. Let’s sit down. Let’s kill her. Let’s do something to shut her up. How about a shot of static at her?”

  “Should help,” agreed Clair. He swung a cumbersome machine on, the figure in the door and pressed a button. A feeble but spectacular bolt of electricity shot at the woman with a roar, pinking her neatly. Suddenly her stream of Swedish was shut off. “You brace of heels!” she snapped. “If you don’t know how to treat a lady, I’m leaving.”

  Gaynor sprang for the door and slammed it. “No,” he said, “not until you explain— ” But she cut him off with a snake-swift clip of the palm to his solar plexus and he folded. Clair swung a switch and the machine roared again, this time louder, and the woman fell beside Gaynor.

  Clair knelt and felt his colleague’s pulse. “She moves fast, that one” said Gaynor, without opening his eyes. “Did you get her?”

  “Sure—with just enough static to put her out for a while. Get some cable and we’ll see what kind of scrub-woman can breeze through locked doors.”

  They tied her securely; then Clair unceremoniously dumped a bucket of water over her. She came to with a sputter and gasp. “Was that thing a death-ray?” she asked with professional interest.

  “No. Just high tension. Who are you and what’s your business with us?”

  “With a hefty tug you can take off my wig,” the woman answered. Gaynor laid hold of a strand of hair and pulled. “My God!” he cried. “Her face comes with it!”

  “Mask,” she said briefly. “I am a reporter for the Helio, name being Earle. I want to congratulate you. gentlemen. This get-up fooled Billikin, Zweistein, and Current. You aren’t the ordinary brand of scientist.”

  “Nor are you the ordinary brand of reporter,” said Clair raptly studying her cameo-like features. “Gaynor, you ape, untie the lady.”

  “Not I,” said his colleague hastily backing away. “It’s your turn to get socked.”

  “I promise to behave,” she said with a smile. Reluctantly the scientist cut the cables that confined her and she rose. “Do you mind if I take off this thing?” she asked indicating her horrible dress. The men stared; Clair finally said, “Not at all.”

  She pulled a long slide-fastener somewhere in the garment and it fell away to reveal a modish street-outfit. Gaynor gulped strangely. “Won’t you sit down, Miss Oil,” he said.

  She settled gracefully into a chair. “Earle,” she corrected him. Clair was looking fixedly at an out-of-date periodic table tacked high on the wall, aware that this peculiar woman was studying him. Approvingly? he wondered.

  “Now, just what was it that you wanted with us, Miss Earle,” he inquired. “Maybe we can work out some arrangement….”

  II. The Prototype

  If Jocelyn hadn’t been a pretty girl, the deal would never have been made. But pretty Jocelyn was, and moreover she was smart enough to capitalize on her good looks.

  So, it was decided that Jocelyn, in return for a promise of strict secrecy until the experiment was concluded, would be included in the maneuvers of the two scientists, would have every opportunity of finding things out and a promise that no other paper would get a crumb of information. That was a very good bargain, for Jocelyn didn’t have to put anything at all up in exchange. She was pretty, and smart. That was enough.

  “Maybe I can help you two great minds anyhow,” she said. “What’re you trying to do?”

  The two looked at each other. Finally Gaynor said: “You’re not a mathematician, Miss—Jocelyn, that is. I don’t know whether we can translate our language into yours. But—maybe you’ve heard of protomagnetism?”

  “No. Whit is it?”

  “Well, proto—we’ll call it proto for short—is something like ordinary magnetism. Only this: ordinary magnetism attracts steel and iron, principally, and only to a very slight degree anything else—such as, for instance, copper and cobalt, which respond just the tiniest bit. Proto attracts a bunch of elements, a little, but so little that it’s never been noticed before For instance, it attracts radium, niton, uranium, and thorium—the radioactive group—a little. The more radioactive, the greater the attraction. And the thing it attracts most of all is the new artificial Element 99.

  “Another difference—magnetism, generally speaking, is a force exerted bet

ween two particles of iron or whatever. Proto, on the other hand, ain’t. Radium doesn’t attract radium—both particles are attracted by something else.”

  “Tell her which way they’re attracted,” interjected Clair.

  “I was coming to that,” started Gaynor, but Jocelyn interrupted with: “What am I supposed to gather from all this? According to my boss, you’ve got some sort of a ship. That’s what he sent me here for: to find out what this ship was, and what you’re going to do with it.”

  Clair was startled. “So it’s an open secret now,” he said to Gaynor.

  “Oh, no,” said Jocelyn; “but I know there’s a ship. I don’t know what kind of a ship it is, but I know it’s there. That’s all we could find out. Now, if you will kindly stop stalling and live up to your end of the bargain …’

  “I wasn’t stalling, though,” said Gaynor resentfully. “That’s what I was going to tell you, that we’ve got the Prototype, and we’re just about ready to use it. And, what’s more, you’re coming along, because that’s your part of the bargain. It wasn’t before, but it is now, because I just made it so.”

  “Fine,” said Jocelyn, unperturbed. “But where are we going?”

  “That’s what I was coming to— ” (“It’s been a long time coming,” murmured Jocelyn). “We’re going to the place whence comes proto. What Art was driving at a while ago is that proto doesn’t pull things upward or downward, or backward or frontward or North-by-East-half-a-point-East, for that matter. It pulls them—out. Into another dimension—or so we think.”

  “Oh,” said Jocelyn. “You mean you’ve got a time machine. How nice. Well thanks a lot for letting me see you fellows, and don’t worry about my keeping your secret. I won’t tell. And I want …”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Gaynor blankly.

  Jocelyn stared at him. “You’re trying to trick me, that’s all. And you’re not going to get away with it. Time machines are impossible. And if you think you’ve got one—I’m going home.”

  “But stop, Jocelyn,” cried Gaynor. “We know time machines are impossible. We didn’t say it was a time machine—you did. As a matter of fact, it probably isn’t a time machine.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Clair chimed in sourly, “we don’t know what it is.”

  Jocelyn looked up at that. “Sure you’re not joking?” They both nodded vehemently. She hesitated, then,

  “You know,” she said, “I think I’m going to like this.”

  An hour later, Gaynor was finishing the job of explaining things to Jocelyn while Clair finished hooking up connections in the lab in the next room.

  “This tube,” Gaynor was saying, “is the keystone of our work. The thing inside that looks like a buckshot is composed of what will be Element 99 when the power is turned on. There’s a lot of gadgets in here that you wouldn’t understand if I explained them to you, but take it from me that I did a fine job in designing this tube. Consider: 99 is artificial, and it’s pretty unstable. I had to incorporate the equipment for building it up and sustaining it. 99 is also radioactive, and I had to shield it to keep you, me, and the machine from crumbling into little glowing lumps. Those together ought to mean about five hundred pounds of equipment, but that was around four hundred and ninety-five more than I could get away with, because of the lack of storage space in the Prototype. So I condensed it to this.” With which effusion he hefted the article in his hand. It fell to the floor with a crunch, its delicate members battered out of shape and its finely fused tubes shattered into bits.

  “I see,” said Jocelyn. “A neat bit of human interest. Was that the last one?”

  “No,” said Gaynor somberly. “We have a couple left.” He took another from a locker and as they walked from the storeroom cast a glance back at the mess on the floor. “It looked a little defective anyhow,” he said.

  In the lab, Clair assigned the girl a place at a rheostat. “When the buzzer buzzes,” he said, “open it wide and stand back.” The tube was inserted, insulated, and tested, and the three took their various places, Clair gave the signal, and the circuits were closed in perfect order. They stared at the tube. It brightened, glowed, and then—smashed wide open without an apparent reason.

  Clair opened the master circuit, looked up. “It did it again,” he said wearily. “Why?”

  “Yeah, why?” echoed Gaynor.

  “Why what?” asked Jocelyn. “Why did it break, you mean?”

  “Yeah,” said Clair dispiritedly.

  “Isn’t it supposed to do that? When the proto pulls it?”

  Gaynor glared at her. “Sure the proto pulls it, and— Hey! That is what it’s supposed to do!”

  Clair sat down heavily. “It sure is,” he agreed. “Of all the damn fools, Paul, you and I…”

  Gaynor was galvanized. “So all we have to do, Art, all we have to do is make the tube strong enough to take the ship with it when it begins pulling!”

  “Did I solve something?” asked Jocelyn, a little bewildered. No one paid any attention to her. All of a sudden, they were hard at work.

  III. Einstein’s Extreme

  Physicists generally have swarms of helpers and technicians to do all the rough, tough manual labor required in their work. This is for two reasons: because successful physicists are generally in their nineties and unable to lift anything much heavier than a gavel at an alumni meeting, and because it is considered by the majority demeaning for a mind-worker to use his hands.

  That is only one of the many ways in which Gaynor and Clair differed from the Genus Physicist. They were young and strong enough to lift anything within reason and they had cranes for the stuff that was unreasonable and yet had to be lifted.

  And they couldn’t afford to have anyone but themselves—and Miss Earle—in their lab. If anyone knew then everyone might. An irresponsible writer or reporter would scatter the news broadcast and effectively gum up their immense undertaking.

  So Gaynor, Clair, and Jocelyn did every last screw-turn and rivet-spread in the creation of the Prototype.

  In about two weeks the job was done. Their ship was ready, a squat but very beautiful object in the eyes of its creators. The installation was complete; it was ready for the test.

  Jocelyn took final notes. “Three dozen eggs,” she read from a list.

  “Check,” said Clair, passing them to Gaynor who stacked the boxes neatly in the ship’s compact refrigeration unit.

  “Six pound of bacon …”

  “And that,” she said, “is the last of the food. Now, perhaps, you’ll tell me why you wanted enough provisions for a month?”

  Evasively, Clair answered, “You never can tell. We may like it so much out there that we’ll decide to stay awhile.”

  Gaynor descended from the Prototype’s main port. “Yeah,” he said. “The lady’s right. I am a physicist, Art, a physicist. Not a porter. And I do not enjoy carrying sacks of sugar and cans of corn. I don’t know why I should be carrying this junk, anyway. We’re not going to be gone long—presumably. If the gadgets work, two days. If not—not.”

  Clair chewed his thumbnail. “You never can tell,” he said. “Maybe I can have a hunch myself, once in a while.” He stood up and said abruptly, “Get your pencils and paper, Jocelyn. I guess we’re leaving—now.”

  Silently, the girl gathered her notebooks up from a table and stepped into the ship. Clair swung home a last switch in the lab and passed through the bulkhead. He slammed and sealed the door. Flatly, he said, “We don’t know what to expect in the line of atmosphere out there.”

  Gaynor took his position at the power receiver. Clair stood at the control. “I’m ready when you are, Paul,” he said.

  His colleague flipped a switch, a relay clicked, and the indicator arced over to the right. “Power on, Art,” he said softly. And Clair closed the prime contact. Slowly the tube warmed up, glimmering with a purplish light. That was the bottle of glass and the maze of wires that was to pull them from one dimension and hurl them into another.

  He slowly, s-l-o-w-1-y, pulled over a rheostat, and the tube slowly brightened.

  And nothing else happened. That was all. The tube got brighter.

  Desperately, angrily, Clair shoved the rheostat all the way over. And nothing, nothing at all, still seemed to have happened.

  Gaynor cried sharply, “What’s the matter?”

 

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