  Phyfe was exuberant. He not only gave permission to construct the generator, he demanded that all work aboard the lab ship give priority to the new project. The design of the machine was no easy task, for Underwood was a physicist and not an engineer. However, he had two men, Moody and Hansen, in his staff who were first rate engineers. On them fell the chief burden of design after Underwood worked out the rough specifications. One of the main laboratories with nearly ten thousand square feet of floor space was cleared for the project. As the specifications flowed from Underwood's desk, they passed over to Moody and Hansen, and from there out to the lab where the mass of equipment was gathered from all parts of the fleet. An atomic power supply sufficient to give the large amount of energy required by the generator was obtained by robbing the headquarters ship of its auxiliary supply. Converter units were available in the Lavoisier itself, but the main radiator tubes had to be cannibalized from the 150 A equipment aboard. Slowly the mass of improvised equipment grew. It would have been a difficult task on Earth with all facilities available for such a project, but with these makeshift arrangements it was a miracle that the generator continued to develop. A score of times Underwood had to make compromises that he hoped would not alter the characteristics of the wave which, two weeks before, he would have declared impossible to generate. When the equipment was completed and ready for a trial check, the huge lab was a mass of hay-wiring into which no one but Moody and Hansen dared go. The completion was an anti-climax. The great project that had almost halted all other field work was finished—and no one knew what to expect when Hansen threw the switch that fed power from the converters into the giant tubes. As a matter of fact, nothing happened. Only the faint whine of the converters and the swinging needles of meters strung all over the room showed that the beam was in operation. On the nose of the Lavoisier was the great, ungainly radiator a hundred feet in diameter, which was spraying the unknown depths of space with the newly created power. Underwood and Terry were outside the ship, behind the huge radiator, with a mass of equipment designed to observe the effects of the beam. In space it was totally invisible, creating no detectable field. It seemed as inactive as a beam of ultraviolet piercing the starlit darkness. Underwood picked up the interphone that connected them with the interior of the ship. "Swing around, please, Captain Dawson. Let the beam rotate through a one hundred and eighty degree arc." The Captain ordered the ship around and the great Lavoisier swung on its own axis—but not in the direction Underwood had had in mind. He failed to indicate the direction, and Dawson had assumed it didn't matter. Ponderously, the great radiator swung about before Underwood could shout a warning. And the beam came directly in line with the mysterious gem of the universe which they had found in the heart of the asteroid. At once, the heavens were filled with intolerable light. Terry and Underwood flung themselves down upon the hull of the ship and the physicist screamed into the phones for Dawson to swing the other way. But his warnings were in vain, for those within the ship were blinded by the great flare of light that penetrated even the protective ports of the ship. Irresistibly, the Lavoisier continued to swing, spraying the great gem with its mysterious radiation. Then it was past and the beam cut into space once more. On top of the ship, Underwood and Terry found their sight slowly returning. They had been saved the full blast of the light from the gem by the curve of the ship's hull which cut it off. Underwood stumbled to his feet, followed by Terry. The two men stood in open-mouthed un-belief at the vision that met their eyes. Where the gem had drifted in space, there was now a blistered, boiling mass of amorphous matter that surged and steamed in the void. All semblance to the glistening, faceted, ebon gem was gone as the repulsive mass heaved within itself. "It's destroyed!" Terry exclaimed hoarsely. "The greatest archeological find of all time and we destroy it before we find out anything about it—" "Shut up!" Underwood commanded harshly. He tried to concentrate on the happenings before him, but he could find no meaning in it. He bemoaned the fact that he had no camera, and only prayed that someone inside would have the wit to turn one on. As the ship continued its slow swing like a senseless animal, the pulsing of the amorphous mass that had been the jewel slowly ceased. And out of the gray murkiness of it came a new quality. It began to regain rigidity—and transparency! Underwood gasped. At the boundary lines of the facets, heavy ribs showed the tremendously reinforced structure that formed the skeleton. And each cell between the ribs was filled with thick substance that partially revealed the unknown world within. But more than that, between one set of ribs he glimpsed what he was sure was an emptiness, a doorway to the interior! "Come on," he called to Terry. "Look at that opening!" They leaped astride the scooters clamped to the surface of the lab ship and sped into space between the two objects. It required only an instant to confirm his first hasty glimpse. They navigated the scooters close to the opening and clamped them to the surface. For a moment, Underwood thought the gem might be some strange ship from far out of the Universe, for it seemed filled with mechanism of undescribable characteristics and unknown purposes. It was so filled that it was impossible to see very far into the interior even with the help of the powerful lamps on the scooters. "The beam was the key to get into the thing," said Terry. "It was intended all along that the beam be turned on it. The beam had to be connected with the gem in some way." "And what a way!" The triangular opening was large enough to admit a man. Underwood and Terry knelt at the edge of it, peering down, flashing their lights about the revealed interior. The opening seemed to drop into the center of a small room that was bare. "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly," quoted Terry. "I don't see anything down there, do you?" "No. Why the spider recitation?" "I don't know. Everything is too pat. I feel as if someone is watching behind us, practically breathing down our necks and urging us on the way he wants us to go. And when we get there we aren't going to like it." "I suppose that is strictly a scientific hunch which we ignorant physicists wouldn't understand." But Terry was serious. The whole aspect of the Stroid device was unnerving in the way it led along from step to step, as if unseen powers were guiding them, rather than using their own initiative in their work. Underwood gave a final grunt and dropped into the hole, flashing his light rapidly about. Terry followed immediately. They found themselves in the center of a circular room twenty feet in diameter. The walls and the floor seemed to be of the same ebony-black material that had composed the outer shell of the gem before its transmutation. The walls were literally covered from the floor to the ten-foot ceiling with inscriptions that glowed faintly in the darkness when the flashlights were not turned on them. "Recognize any of this stuff?" asked Underwood. "Stroid III," said Terry in awe. "The most beautiful collection of engravings that have ever been found. We've never obtained a consecutive piece even a fraction this size before. Dreyer has got to come now." "I've got a hunch about this," said Underwood slowly. "I don't know a thing about the procedures used in deciphering an unknown lingo, but I'll bet you find that this is an instruction primer to their language, just as the inscriptions outside gave the key to their math before detailing the wave equations." "You might be right!" Terry's eyes glowed with enthusiasm as he looked about the polished walls with the faintly glowing characters inlaid in them. "If that's the case, Papa Phyfe and I ought to be able to do the job without Dreyer." They returned to the ship for photographic equipment and to report their finding to Phyfe. It was a little difficult for him to adjust to the view that something had been gained in the transformation of the gem. The sight of that boiling, amorphous mass in space had been to him like helplessly standing on the bank of a stream and watching a loved one drown. But with Terry's report on the characters in Stroid III which lined the walls of the antechamber which they had penetrated, he was ready to admit that their position had improved. Underwood was merely a by-stander as they returned to the gem. Two photographers, Carson and Enright, accompanied them along with Nichols, assistant semanticist. Underwood stood by, in the depths of speculation, as the photographers set up their equipment and Phyfe bent down to examine the characters at close range. Terry continued to be dogged by the feeling that they were being led by the nose into something that would end unpleasantly. He didn't know why, except that the fact of immense and meticulous preparation was evidenced on all sides. It was the reason for that preparation which made him wonder. Phyfe said to Underwood, "Doctor Bernard tells me your opinion is that this room is a key to Stroid III. You may be right, but I fail to find any indication of it at present. What gives you that idea?" "The whole setup," said Underwood. "First, there was the impenetrable shell. Nothing like it exists in Solarian culture today. Then there was the means by which we were able to read the inscriptions on the outside. Obviously, if heat and fission reactions as well as chemical reactions could not touch the stuff, the only remaining means of analysis was radiative. And the only peoples who could discover the inscriptions were those capable of building a generator of 150 A. radiations. We have there two highly technical requirements of anyone attempting to solve the secret of this cache—ability to generate the proper radiation, and the ability to understand their mathematics and build a second generator from their wave equations. "Now that we're in here, there is nothing more we can do until we can understand their printed language. Obviously, they must teach it to us. This would be the place." "You may be right," said Phyfe, "But we archeologists work with facts, not guesses. We'll know soon enough if it's true." Underwood felt content to speculate while the others worked. There was nothing else for him to do. No way out of the anteroom was apparent, but he was confident that a way to the interior would be found when the inscriptions were deciphered. He went out to the surface and walked slowly about, peering into the transparent depths with his light. What lay within this repository left by an ancient race that had obviously equaled or surpassed man in scientific attainments? Would it be some vast store of knowledge that would come to bless mankind with greater abundance? Or would it, rather, be a new Pandora's box, which would pour out upon the world new ills to add to its already staggering burden? The world had about all it could stand now, Underwood reflected. For a century, Earth's scientific production had boomed. Her factories had roared with the throb of incessant production, and the utopia of all the planners of history was gradually coming to pass. Man's capacities for production had steadily increased for five hundred years, and at last the capacities for consumption were rising equally, with correspondingly less time spent in production and greater time spent in consumption. But the utopia wasn't coming off just as the Utopians had dreamed of it. The ever present curse of enforced leisure was not respecting the new age any more than it had past ages. Men were literally being driven crazy with their super-abundance of luxury. Only a year before, the so-called Howling Craze had swept cities and nations. It was a wave of hysteria that broke out in epidemic proportions. Thousands of people within a city would be stricken at a time by insensate weeping and despair. One member of a household would be afflicted and quickly it would spread from that man to the family, and from that family it would race the length and breadth of the streets, up and down the city, until one vast cry as of a stricken animal would assault the heavens. Underwood had seen only one instance of the Howling Craze and he had fled from it as if pursued. It was impossible to describe its effects upon the nervous system—a whole city in the throes of hysteria. Life was cheap, as were the other luxuries of Earth. Murders by the thousands each month were scarcely noticed, and the possession of weapons for protection had become a mark of the new age, for no man knew when his neighbor might turn upon him. Governments rose and fell swiftly and became little more than figureheads to carry out the demands of peoples cloyed with the excesses of life. Most significant of all, however, was the inability of any leader to hold any following for more than a short time. Of all the inhabitants of Earth, there were but a few hundred thousand scientists who were able to keep themselves on even keel, and most of these were now fleeing. As he thought of these things, Underwood pondered what the opening of the repository of a people who sealed up their secrets half a million years ago would mean to mankind. This must be what Terry felt, he thought. For perhaps three hours he remained on the outside of the shell, letting his mind idle under the brilliance of the stars. Suddenly, the phones in his helmet came alive with sound. It was the voice of Terry Bernard. "We've got it, Del," he said quietly. "We can read this stuff like nursery rhymes. Come on down. It tells us how to get into the thing." Underwood did not hurry. He rose slowly from his sitting position and stared upward at the stars, the same stars that had looked down upon the beings who had sealed up the repository. This is it, he thought. Man can never go back again. He lowered himself into the opening. Doctor Phyfe was strangely quiet in spite of their quick success in deciphering the language of the Stroids. Underwood wondered what was going through the old man's mind. Did he, too, sense the magnitude of this moment? Phyfe said, "They were semanticists as well. They knew Carnovan's frequency. It's right here, the key they used to reveal their language. No one less advanced in semantics than our own civilization could have deciphered it, but with a knowledge of Carnovan's frequency, it is simple." "Practically hand-picked us for the job," said Terry. Phyfe's sharp eyes turned upon him suddenly behind the double protection of his spectacles and the transparent helmet of the spacesuit. "Perhaps," said Phyfe. "Perhaps we are. At any rate, there are certain manipulations to be performed which will open this chamber and provide passage to the interior." "Where's the door?" said Underwood. Following the notes he had made, Terry moved about the room, directing Underwood's attention to features of the design. Delicately carved, movable levers formed an intricate combination that suddenly released a section of the floor in the exact center of the room. It depressed slowly, then revolved out of the way. For a moment no one spoke while Phyfe moved to the opening and peered down. A stairway of the same glistening material as the walls about them led downward into the depths of the repository. Phyfe stepped down and almost stumbled into the opening. "Watch for those steps," he warned. "They're larger than necessary for human beings." Giants in those days came to Underwood's mind. He tried to vision the creatures who had walked upon this stairway and touched the hand rail that was shoulder high for him. The repository was divided into levels and the stairway ended abruptly as they came to the level below the anteroom. The chamber in which they found themselves was crowded with artifacts of strange shapes and varying sizes. Not a thing of familiar cast greeted them. But opposite the bottom of the stairway was a pedestal and upon it rested a booklike object that proved to be hinged metallic sheets, covered with Stroid III inscriptions, when Terry climbed up to examine it. He was unable to move it, but the metal pages were locked with a simple clasp that responded to his touch. "It looks as if we've got to read our way along," said Terry. "I suppose this will tell us how to get into the next room." Underwood and the other expedition members moved cautiously about, examining the contents of the room. The two photographers began to make an orderly pictorial record of everything within the chamber. Standing alone in one corner, Underwood peered at an object that appeared to be nothing but a series of opaque, polychrome globes tangent to each other and mounted on a pedestal. Whether it were some kind of machine or monument, he could not tell. "You feel it, too," said a sudden quiet voice behind him. Underwood whirled about in surprise. Phyfe was there behind him, his slight figure a shapeless shadow in the spacesuit. "Feel what?" "I've watched you, Doctor Underwood. You are a physicist and in far closer touch with the real world than I. You have seen me—I cannot even manage an expedition with efficiency—my mind lives constantly in the past, and I cannot comprehend the significance of contemporary things. Tell me what it will mean, this intrusion of an alien science into our own." A sudden, new, and humbling respect filled Underwood. He had never dreamed that the little archeologist had such a penetrating view of himself in his relation to his environment. "I wish I could answer that question," said Underwood, shaking his head. "I can't. Perhaps if we knew, we'd destroy the thing—or it might be that we'd shout our discovery to the Universe. But we can't know, and we wouldn't dare be the judges if we could. Whatever it is, the ancient Stroids seem to have deliberately attempted to provide for the survival of their culture." He hesitated. "That, of course is my guess." In the darkened corner of the chamber, Phyfe nodded slowly. "You are right, of course. It is the only answer. We dare not try to be the judges." Underwood saw that he would get nowhere in his understanding of the Stroid science by merely depending on the translations given him by Terry and Phyfe. He'd have to learn to read the Stroid inscriptions himself. He buttonholed Nichols and got the semanticist to show him the rudiments of the language. It was amazingly simple in principle and constructed along semantic lines. The going became rapidly heavier, however, and it took them the equivalent of five days to get through the fairly elementary material disclosed in the first level below the antechamber. The book of metal pages did little to satisfy their curiosity concerning either the ancient planet or its culture. It instructed them further in understanding the language, and addressed them as Unknown friends—the nearest human translation. As was already apparent, the repository had been prepared to save the highest products of the ancient Stroid culture from the destruction that came upon the world. But the records did not even hint as to the nature of that destruction and they said nothing about the objects in the room. The scientists were a bit disappointed by the little revealed to them so far, but, as expected, there were instructions to enter the next lower level. There, an entirely different situation confronted them. The chamber into which they came after winding down a long, spiral stairway, narrow, yet with the same high steps as before, was spherical in shape and seemed to be concentric with the outer shell of the repository. It contained a single object. The object was a cube in the center of the chamber, about two feet on a side. From the corners of the cube, long supports of complicated spring structure led to the inner surface of the spherical chamber. It appeared to be a highly effective shock mounting for whatever was contained within the cube. The sight before the men was impressive in simplicity, yet was anticlimactic, for there was nothing here of the great wonders that they had expected. There was only the suspended cube—and a book. Quickly, Phyfe advanced along the narrow catwalk that led from the opening to the cube. The book lay on a shelf fastened to the side of the cube. Phyfe opened it to the first sheet and read haltingly and laboriously: "Greetings, Unknown Friends, Greetings to you from the Great One. By the token that you are now reading this, you have proven yourselves mentally capable of understanding the new world of knowledge and discovery that may be yours. "I am Demarzule, the Great One the greatest of great Sirenia—and the last. And within the storehouse of my mind is the vast knowledge that made Sirenia the greatest world in all the Universe. "Great as it was, however, destruction came to the world of Sirenia. But her knowledge and her wonders shall never pass. In ages after, new worlds will rise and beings will inhabit them, and they will come to a minimum plane of knowledge that will assure their appreciation of the wonders that may be theirs from the world of Sirenia. "You have minimum technical knowledge, else you could not have created the radiation necessary to render the storehouse penetrable. You have a minimum semantic knowledge, else you could not have understood my words that have brought you this far. "You are fit and capable to behold the Great One of Sirenia!" As Phyfe turned over the first metal sheet, the men looked at each other. It was Nichols, the semanticist, who said, "There are only two possibilities in a mind that would write a statement of that kind. Either it belonged to a truly superior being, or to a maniac. So far, in man's history, there has not been encountered such a superior being. If he existed, it would have been wonderful to have known him." Phyfe paused and peered with difficulty through the helmet of the spacesuit. He continued, "I live. I am eternal. I am in your midst, Unknown Friends, and to your hands falls the task of bringing speech to my voice, and sight to my eyes, and feeling to my hands. Then, when you have fulfilled your mighty task, you shall behold me and the greatness of the Great One of Sirenia." Enright, the photographer said, "What the devil does that mean? The guy must have been nuts. He sounds like he expected to come back to life." The feeling within Underwood was more than bearable. It was composed of surging anticipation and quiet fearfulness, and they mingled in a raging torrent. The men made no sound as Phyfe read on, "I shall live again. The Great One shall return, and you who are my Unknown Friends shall assist me to return to life. Then and only then shall you know the great secrets of the world of Sirenia which are a thousand times greater than your own. Only then shall you become mighty, with the secrets of Sirenia locked in my brain. By the powers I shall reveal, you shall become mighty until there are none greater in all the Universe." Phyfe turned the page. Abruptly he stopped. He turned to Underwood. "The rest of it is yours," he said. "What—?" Underwood glanced at the page of inscription. With difficulty he took up the reading silently. The substance of the writings had changed and here was a sudden wilderness of an alien science. Slowly he plodded through the first concepts, then skimmed as it became evident that here was material for days of study. But out of his hasty scanning there came a vision of a great dream, a dream of conquest of the eons, the preservation of life while worlds waned and died and flared anew. It told of an unknown radiation turned upon living cells, reducing them to primeval protoplasm, arresting all but the symbol of metabolism. And it spoke of other radiation and complex chemical treatment, a fantastic process that could restore again the life that had been only symbolized by the dormant protoplasm. Underwood looked up. His eyes went from the featureless cube to the faces of his companions. "It's alive!" he breathed. "Five hundred million years—and it's alive! These are instructions by which it may be restored!" None of the others spoke, but Underwood's eyes were as if a sudden, great commission had been placed upon him. Out of the turmoil of his thoughts a single purpose emerged, clear and irrevocable. Within that cube lay dormant matter that could be formed into a brain—an alien but mighty brain. Suddenly, Underwood felt an irrational kinship with the ancient creature who had so conquered time, and in his own mind he silently vowed that if it lay within his power, that creature would live again, and speak its ancient secrets. |
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