Carroll cared little for his immediate surroundings for he knew that once he made his point and carried it to the awakened Solar System, not only would all of the past suspicion be forgotten but he would receive an even greater reward for having suffered to carry on.
Then, as the flush of newness wore away, the guards and attendants let him alone more. All of them were trained in handling the insane and they treated each new inmate with considerable suspicion until the exact nature of the patient's instability was known.
Carroll's main and only argumentative period came when he was not permitted to work as he pleased. And so long as no one mentioned the word 'alien' in any way he was silent—lost in his thoughts and his plans.
As soon as they furnished him with working space, Carroll knew that his incarceration was a godsend. For—barring the chance that one of the guards might be alien—if he could not get out they could not get in. This was security.
The one off-chance worried Carroll. It would be hard enough to segregate the few humanoid aliens from the mass of humanity. But with the aliens occupying human bodies it was impossible. Just how it was done Carroll could not say but he considered the problem and arrived at a solution from sheer deductive reasoning.
It was pathologically impossible to consider surgery—the gross transplantation of a brain. For one thing—among many—there is the matter of blood supply. Incorrect blood matching causes death in a transfusion. This is not because of the mismatch in the blood stream per se, it is because the metabolism of the entire human body is not matched to the different type of blood.
To transplant a brain would require that something be done about the blood supply—if changed to match the brain the body would die, if not the brain would die. And there was no remote possibility that any alien brain would match human blood.
It is even difficult in many cases to graft skin from one part of a human's body to another, let alone grafting skin from one to another body—and the possibility of cross-grafting across the line of demarcation between Terran species was unthinkable.
Just with common skin.
The brain?
Impossible!
There was, however, the whole matrix of mental gadgets, hypnotic beams, educators and other gewgaws of the alien culture. The old thought patterns could easily be erased and replaced by a new system. That would—despite theological arguments to the contrary—result in a new person. For all beings are what their experiences and their training makes them.
A sentience produced in a humanoid body on a remote planet and mentally hurled into a human brain will change the human to an alien in thought and deed—but capable of living as a human! There is nothing in thought that is inimical as there would be in the sheer complexity of biochemistry.
Thoughts, even nasty vagrant thoughts, do not kill. But how large is the lethal dose of polio virus or potassium cyanide or unmatched blood?
An autopsy they might some day perform, but unless they could read her thoughts, they would find nothing! How then to identify the alien?
Nay! How then to prove that there were aliens!
There were both excitement and suspicion when Carroll built the teleport in his asylum laboratory. It was too much like incarcerating a man who had the ability to walk out of the place without half-trying. In fact, as one of the guards put it, that's exactly what it was.
It was Majors who smiled and shook his head. He pointed out that so far there were but two of them, one in the office of the psychologist Pollard and the other in the Wisconsin home of the inmate himself. Both were turned off.
Majors, not really understanding the principle of the things, had them both placed in a sealed room. Whether Carroll could turn on an inert machine from a remote place he did not know and he was taking no chances.
But Carroll's experiments with his new teleport seemed innocuous enough. For several days he fiddled with the tuning and synchronizing controls that were used to tune one teleport to the other.
He kept constantly 'ON' the switch that remotely operated any distant teleport that his own happened to be tuned to but his work did very little good. He found the two that were sealed in the tiny room and knew them for what they were. Carroll was seeking the teleports of the aliens.
For days he searched the—subspace?—for the alien teleports and found none. Then in a desperate measure, Carroll finally went through to the room in the Lawson Laboratory and, using some of his store of tools, broke the sealed door.
Brashly Carroll stole an automobile. Equally rash, he drove at breakneck speed along the roads that led him up into the Virginia mountains along the back-path that he had traversed only once before in a conscious condition, and then from the opposite direction with Rhinegallis pointing out the way.
It took many hours before he came to the little side-road that led like a mountain goat's retreat up into the top hills. It changed from a side-road to a mere trail and then branched from a mere trail to an unkempt, rutted footpath that jounced the automobile terribly.
Miles along this rocky path, Carroll turned into a clearing—a well-remembered clearing, and he looked across it—in surprise. The building itself was gone! No wonder he could find no teleports!
And the words of Kingallis returned to him. "You won't live long enough!" the alien had said. "The universe isn't big enough for both of us!"
The rats had deserted the doomed ship!
It was so pat—so perfect! Now they would say that there never had been any aliens. At every turn Carroll was blocked and stopped and frustrated. How long the aliens had been guarding Terra he did not know. Perhaps about the time that the Lawson Radiation was discovered, or perhaps even before.
No matter how good they were at intercepting things, the aliens could not keep some things from leaking out. They might have been here for centuries awaiting the man Lawson who was the discoverer.
They might have been covering information that would have led to the discovery until they could no longer stop it. At that point in the rise of any culture the discovery of such a factor would be almost automatic....
Taking any science as a parallel, civilization makes its discoveries as it is ready for them. The discovery of radio would have been impossible before the knowledge of electricity. Nuclear physics would have been impossible without a working knowledge of simple chemistry.
Each science stood upon the shoulders of the other. Electronics aided astronomy, mechanics aided electronics and chemistry aided mechanics. Physics gave men more information about chemistry and chemistry was a foundation stone for electronics.
How long that had been here Carroll did not care. The pertinent thing at present was the simple fact thatnow they were gone!
Gone because they dared not stay!
Carroll cursed. It was his fault. Whatever was being done to eliminate Terra as a threat to the aliens' ideas of aggrandizement was being done because James Forrest Carroll had been instrumental in uncovering their schemes. Had he remained in ignorance there would have been no reason for their latest plan—conquest for aggrandizement does not include extermination.
To exterminate an enemy spells economic failure. There is little glory in being the Lord of All whenAllconsists of burned planets, dead cultures and the hollow grinning skulls of a billion billion intelligences.
Homage comes not from a skull.
There, in the moonlight of the clearing where once stood a large alien edifice, Carroll took from the back seat of his stolen car the knocked-down teleport and set it up alongside the road. He stepped into it and emerged in his asylum laboratory.
He ignored the fact that both car and teleport were stolen and abandoned. The only thing of importance now was the safety—the personal safety—of all Terrans, whether they believed or not. That he alone had good reason to believe in the threat was unimportant. There have been many cases in the world of history when one man alone stood against the world and was right.
Let them scoff.
Yet Carroll felt the full impact of helpless frustration. He was pitted against an alien culture capable of scientific marvels such as the teleport and interstellar travel and other things. They were capable of destroying the solar system while the only man who stood against them was incapable even of discovering how they intended to do it.
He threw himself into his work and the days sped past as he built and experimented and planned—and all too occasionally failed. When his cohorts came to him with the announcement that the first sixty-foot paraboloid of revolution was to be initiated that day at the Lunar Observatory Carroll merely nodded and returned to his work.
He cared not at all that the new observatory was to be called the Carroll Observatory in honor of the man who made possible the perfect reflector. At that time, Carroll was busy with his invisible fields of force and spacial planes of stress and did not want to be bothered with trivia—especially trivia that he had really had no hand in inventing.
A lot of good the Carroll Observatory would be to mankind if the Solar System were destroyed!
Majors entered Dr. Pollard's office with a large glossy photograph in one hand. Pollard looked up amusedly as Majors said, "I'm getting psycho, I guess."
"Yes? And what makes you think so?"
Majors laughed. "Because every time I get a problem I seem to come to you instead of going where it can be answered by theoreticians and physicists."
Pollard smiled. "I think you come here because this is one place where you can hold your own with another man who can hold his own with you," he observed.
"Well," admitted Majors, "you don't understand theoretical physics as well as I do and psychology is over my head. Anyway, what do you make of this?"
The photograph was of a patch of sky. Pollard shook his head.
"Is this a test question?" he asked. "Remember, I'm the psychiatrist and I'm supposed to hand the patient strange items and ask them what they see in them."
Majors laughed. "This is a section of Boötes."
"Boötees," murmured Pollard irrelevantly, "are knitted gadgets you put on babies' feet."
"All right, I'll leave quietly," chuckled Majors. "Seriously, though, look at this." He pointed out a tiny smudge among the myriad of stars.
"Well?" asked the doctor.
"It shouldn't be."
"Maybe a flaw?"
"Nope," objected Majors. "It persists through twenty-seven photographs made one minute apart—each exposed for one minute."
"Um. What is it?"
"Don't know," replied Majors. "But it is darned interesting."
"Boötes is the region from whence comes the Lawson Radiation, isn't it?"
Majors nodded. "That's why they sent it to me. It was taken by the Carroll Telescope on Luna, a sort of tribute to Carroll that the first photographs and work done by his invention be directed at that portion of the sky he worked so long on—to his own downfall."
"Tell me, Majors, do you often get these kind of smudges?"
"Not this kind but there have been other kinds."
Dr. Pollard looked at the smudge. "Let's take this to Carroll," he suggested. "Maybe it might mean something to that hidden portion of his mind that refuses to admit what it knows about the Lawson Radiation."
"Through the teleport?"
"Why not? If it's not available at the other end, we'll just meet a solid mirror and can't step through. That worried me for a long time, that idea of not having a place to go to. Just step out into—heaven knows what—because the other end wasn't connected. Come on!"
The teleport in Carroll's asylum laboratory gave the physicist warning that they were coming through. He turned as they entered with an annoyed smile on his face. Before him was a long paper record of Lawson Radiation recordings that Carroll was studying through a magnifier.
Majors handed Carroll the photo, saying, "What do you make of this?"
"It's a bad blur—like a misfocused image," replied Carroll.
"Yes—but why?"
"You've heard of the Einstein Lens?"
"Vaguely, but thought it was just a dream—a probability that never happened."
Pollard shook his head. "I don't know about it at all," he admitted.
Carroll smiled tolerantly. "Light has energy and energy has mass," he said. "Ergo light has mass. Masses attract one another according to the Newtonian Law of Gravitation. Ergo light is bent by passing close to a mass."
"I see," said Pollard leaping to the right conclusion. "Then light radiated from a very distant galaxy may pass close enough to a dark mass—with Terra, the mass and the galaxy in line—to have the distant galaxy focus itself here?"
"Yes," replied Carroll. "The mass acts as a biconvex lens because it bends all tangential light toward the center as the beam passes."
"But the Einstein Lens effect doesn't make smudges like this," objected Majors.
Pollard whistled. "You mean to say that the Einstein Lens is known to be a fact?"
"Right. Several cases are known and accepted as such!"
"Well!"
Carroll looked up from the smudge. "A negative lens," he said, "would cause diffusion like this."
Majors blinked. "That would mean—oh, no!"
"Negative matter," said Carroll promptly.
"Um. You postulate a negative mass in line with the light from a star?"
Carroll nodded.
Majors smiled and took out a roll of thirty-five millimeter film. He handed it to Carroll.
"I took the liberty of making smaller prints," he said. "Those are the other thirty-five pix made near that area. You'll see the initiation of the smudge on the second, and the completion of it on the twenty-eighth. The others are just spares."
Carroll looked at the smudges, one after the other.
"You'll note that the thirteenth, the twentieth, and the twenty-fifth have rather larger areas," said Majors. "Also, on the thirty-first—after the body presumably has passed out of line—there is one more faint flare-point. That was minutes after the thing passed out of line."
Carroll read the pictures carefully and then without a word he turned to the desk. He picked up the tape of Lawson Radiation recordings and handed it to Majors.
"Here," he said, "is correlation between astronomical fact and the Lawson Radiation."
There were four definite pips on the line. Four spikes that reached up, with each spike labelled as to the time of reception. Though the intrinsic time did not match by hours the spacing between the pips and the flared photographs was perfect.
"Then what?" asked Majors, and Pollard held his breath.
"A mass of negative matter passing through space," said Carroll, "would naturally be struck occasionally by meteors or small celestial bodies."
"But if negative matter is repulsive instead of attractive?" objected Majors.
"Then," said Carroll simply, "the only masses that can strike the repulsive celestial negative-mass are those other masses that possess the velocity that corresponds to the velocity of escape in normal mass!"
Majors looked thoughtful.
"I get it," said Majors. "The velocity of escape is that velocity attained by any mass in falling to the earth from an infinite distance. Converted, any mass given that velocity upon the instant of departure need have no more acceleration applied in order that the mass be driven to an infinite distance against gravity. Follow?"
"Uh-huh," said Pollard.
"In the case of a repulsive mass—negative mass—in order for any other object to strike it it must possess enough energy to overcome the repulsion. This would be the inverted equivalent of the velocity of escape!"
"Negative mass and positive mass would cancel one another?"
Carroll nodded. "Producing the Lawson Radiation!"
"Then all these years we have been following a bit of negative mass getting hit by normal meteors."
Carroll shook his head. "You check the orbit of that mass," he said, "and you'll find out that it is due to strike Sol!"
"You know?"
"I suspect," said Carroll. "The aliens must destroy us lest we destroy them. This is their way. We must stop that mass!"
"Look," said Majors. "Let's find out the course of that celestial object first!"
"It will be," said Carroll.
"Carroll," objected Majors, "why must you insist upon blaming the aliens for something that is definitely a matter of celestial chance?"
"Because it is not celestial chance," snapped Carroll. "And I'll yet prove it!"
CHAPTER XI
Prophets of Doom
Rita Galloway came at Pollard's request, and the doctor told her about the new developments. She listened with interest, finally nodded with comprehension.
"So that," she said, "is what drove him mad?"
Pollard smiled. "Obvious, isn't it?"
"Not too obvious to one who is not completely informed as to the workings of the mind."
Pollard smiled again. "Sorry," he said. "I thought it was simple. It may be me, but I will try to show you that the mechanics of the mind are as logical in madness as in sanity—or in plain cause-and-effect mechanical systems.
"Somehow during his researches in the Lawson Radiation he stumbled upon the truth. He studied it, not daring to believe at first the possibility of a negative mass. Yet the facts were there and in some manner Carroll managed to develop a system of physical mathematics that tended to prove his point.
"I have no doubt, Rita, that if we find any tampering with the Lawson Laboratory records, they will have been tampered with by Carroll himself, who refused to let this bizarre affair be known until he was certain.
"You see, Carroll knew the storm of protest that would arise if any physicist tried to promulgate such a theory without almost certain proof. So he concealed it. But he studied it thoroughly. And in his studies he discovered that this negative mass was heading for Terra."
Majors cleared his throat. "Tell me, Doctor Pollard, how you make these vast assumptions? Aren't you like the classical definition of a physicist? You know, a man of limited reason who can leap from an unfounded theory to a foregone conclusion?"
Pollard laughed. "Rita was not there. But you were. Did you note how quickly Carroll picked out the point? One look at the photographs, one look at the Lawson Record and one statement of fact—all tied in to absolute perfection. Carroll knew that his theory was terribly thin—also he knew the futility of trying to stop a cosmic body approaching Terra. The combination drove him into hallucination."
"Amnesia?"
"Yes. It all ties in. Every bit."
"Go ahead and tie, Doc."
Pollard nodded. "His is a classic form of schizophrenia. For his years of study he is presented with the knowledge of certain destruction. This is terrible to face per se. It is terrible to think of one's self telling the world that he has just discovered the first true and provable link in the ending of the Solar System. It is like uttering the clarion of doom.
"Now remember," said Pollard, pointing off the pertinent spots on his fingers, "that Carroll probably tampered with the records or at least did not list the truth. Tampered with or falsified. That's point number one. Secondly, the true schizophrenic-paranoid cannot rail against a mechanistic fate.
"He must find some sentience to fight, some evil mind to combat. For the paranoid feels that he can win in the end, which of course would be impossible against a case of mechanistic doom. Therefore Carroll needed some sentient manifestation of this doom, something that he could strike at, fight against. Therefore he has accused an 'alien culture' of tampering with the records to prevent us from knowing the truth.
"I tried to tell him of many others who claimed to have discovered a 'master-mind' that treated humans as we treat goldfish and guinea pigs. I tried to ask him why, if these master minds are so omnipotent that they can spend fifty thousand years watching an experiment in humanity, they were not smart enough to do away with the one man in that time that might cause them trouble. That's the link that stumbles most Prophets of Doom."
He paused.
"But James Forrest Carroll is completely self-justified. His explanation was simple enough to sound right. He merely claimed that, since his mind was sufficiently strong to best their 'hypnosis beams', they kept him alive to study him. You see? He is so mighty that they do not dare. True paranoia.
"Now, point three. Carroll is a brilliant man with a vast imagination. Yet his training as a physicist kept him from trying many wild schemes or things that might be against the teachings of modern physics. Therefore he attributes the many superscientific marvels to the techniques of the 'aliens'. In truth no Terran physicist would believe them possible. The conscious mind rejects the idea of the teleport for instance.
"But there was terrible compulsion. He must avert the destruction of Sol. This he can do, he believes, by learning much of the alien science and turning their own trick against them. Things that no sensible physicist would even consider must be given a try in this period of emergency. Therefore he went into hallucination in order to invent this 'science'—because his conscious mind tells him that it is impossible."
"Aren't you missing the motivation?" asked Majors.
"Not at all, I just stated it. His subconscious mind knew that the only way to stop this catastrophe was to try the products of an untrammelled imagination."
"Rather complex, don't you think?"
"Not to the mind. It is all self-justification. Remember the attack on Rita? Her ribs constricted by a heavy leather strap? A normal man with the impulse to kill doesn't go to such bizarre lengths. A shot, a stab, a bit of poison.
"Also," added the psychologist, "it is commentary on the mind of the paranoid that cruel and unusual forms of torture and death are uppermost. Since in Carroll's deluded mind this attack was to be used as proof of the alien culture, the crime must be made to look alien and unearthly.
"Well," said Pollard with a deep sigh, "We have smoked him out at last. We have uncovered the hidden truth in Carroll's mind. Rita, we need you again."
"I know," she said quietly.
"You forgive him?"
"Of course," she said. "And if I did not I should cover it. After all, this is no longer a matter of men and women and minor hates. This is Man against the Universe. And if I must sacrifice myself to see that Sol remains I shall, and gladly."
"How about your brother?"
"He hates Carroll. Terribly."
Majors grunted. "We'll take care of him. Maybe he's the real madman in this scramble."
"At any rate," said Pollard, "we all have something tangible to fight, now. Go to him, Rita. You have his confidence, even though he believes you to be one of the 'aliens'."
"Go to him?" she asked with a smile, "I'll not have to. Carroll will come to me."
"You seem certain."
"You may scoff at feminine intuition," she said with a laugh, "but in some cases it works. You see, no matter what Carroll thinks of me, he is aware of the fact that I am a woman. Meanwhile I'll merely borrow that portable teleport and wait."
The room was dark save for a slight streak of yellow moonlight. As the night progressed, the streak of moonlight passed across the room, illuminating the sleeping girl, the dresser, the desk, the teleport, the blank wall.
And in the early morning hours the perfect plane of the teleport flashed briefly to admit James Forrest Carroll. Blinking, he looked around the darkened room until his eyes adapted themselves. Then he made his way to the side of the bed. The motion of the bed as he sat upon the edge awakened the girl, who sat up quietly enough to allay Carroll's fears that she would shriek.
"Rhine," he said softly.
"Yes," she replied.
"I need your help."
"I know. I'll give it."
"You will?" was his reply. The tone of his voice was indefinable. There was mingled wonder, and scorn, and suspicion.
"I will."
He laughed sardonically. "Now you'll help," he said. "Why didn't you help me when they accused me of trying to murder you?"
She shook her head sadly, and reached for his hand. He tried to withdraw but she held it fast.
"James," she said with a note of pleading in her voice. "Please believe me. I wanted to. But you see, my testimony was worthless. All I remember was a blow on the back of the head. Blinding lights, roaring sound and waves of pain that came and went in crescendo and diminuendo until I came to in Doctor Pollard's surgery."
"They blamed me."
"I know," she said.
"Perhaps you blamed me too." His hand tightened on hers as though he were silently praying for her denial.
Rhine lifted her other hand and put its palm against his cheek. "James," she said softly, "I did not see nor did I hear, but I know that whoever it was it was not the man who is here tonight."
He smiled quietly. "I keep forgetting the quality of mind that I am up against," he said.
"Mind?"
"Mind—or mentality," he said. "You see, Rhine, parallel evolution is impossible. So is the idea of brain transplantation. Hence the only way in which your race can invade ours is by mental replacement, invasion, control—or by wiping the other brain clean and clear and taking over. This leaves you an alien mind in a human body."
She laughed faintly. "I've often told you that you nor anybody else would ever get evidence to prove that I am not a very human person," she said softly. Her hand upon his cheek moved slightly and then slid around to the back of his head. She drew it forward and met his lips with hers.
For but a brief instant he resisted. Then he yielded as her lips parted beneath his invitingly. His arms went around her and he cradled her close to him and he knew with sweet completeness that, alien mind or not, there was no question nor doubt about her responding to him.
Minutes later she leaned back in his arms and chuckled at him. He grunted a wordless demand to explain.
"Why," she said, still chuckling, "you'd have a terrible time explaining to any one of a hundred billion human beings that I am utterly alien and that this friendship of ours is strictly platonic and developed out of a desire for mutual desire for protection against our respective races."
Carroll looked around. The streak of moonlight had moved. It was now casting a pale golden light on an easy chair. Draped across the easy chair back was a pale green negligee almost as intangible and diaphanous as the moonlight. Carroll blushed and remembered where he was—and also why he had come.
"Rhine," he said. "You'll come with me?"
"Of course," she told him.
His suspicion returned vaguely. "Tell me," he pleaded, "Is it because you know that there is no return for you or—"
"Sol is menaced," she replied simply. "Sol must be saved and you are the only man in the world that can do it. I want Sol saved."
"But why?" he demanded.
"Because," she replied.
Carroll shook his head. Question and answer were pat. Human, alien, animal, vegetable or mineral—the same question and the same answer!
Rhine chuckled again. "Beat it," she said. "But leave the teleport running. I'll be through as soon as I'm dressed."
He nodded, arose and went through the teleport. Rhinegallis followed him in about ten minutes and once more they were in the laboratory of Carroll's Wisconsin home.
CHAPTER XII
Negative Matter
For an instant their gaze held.
"Now," asked Carroll, "what is the Lawson Radiation?"
"Should I know?" she queried by way of reply.
"I think so."
"Why?"
"As an emissary, you should."
She laughed. "I'm still giving no evidence, James. I cannot. I am human."
He looked down at her, and the recollection of her kiss was strong. "There are times," he said ruminatively, "when you most certainly are!"
She let her eyes drop. Then she raised them again. "I know very little about it," she told him. "And practically nothing but what you've told me. A lot about alien mathematics and sciences. I think that somewhere in the maze of data there will be the answer you seek."
"And that," he replied, "may be either a chance statement based upon good prediction or the remark of an alien who knows where the body is hidden but will say nothing more than, 'Getting warmer'."
"So what do we do?" she asked. "Shall we let this simmer down to the old unanswerable argument as to my mental status or shall we forget that and take to real investigation?"
"Investigation," he said. "You're a darned good librarian, Rhine. You tabulate and I'll try to juggle it out."
Rhine went to the draftman's table and sat down.
"I've maintained all along that the Lawson Radiation was the by-product of faster-than-light travel," he said. "Ignoring the argument of aliens and such, we have good evidence at present. There is a body of negative mass approaching Terra. This negative mass is approaching Terra at a velocity not only exceeding the velocity of light but traveling several hundred times the velocity of light."
He paused. Then he sat down—hard.
"What's the matter?" she asked, seeing the look of consternation on his face.
"The photographs," he said bleakly.
"Yes?"
"Can a rifle bullet traveling faster than sound be heard before it arrives?" he asked enigmatically.
"No."
"Then a body traveling faster than light cannot be seen before it arrives! Those pictures show a region of the sky and a few stellar catastrophes that took place years ago when the light left there unless—"
"Unless what?"
"Unless the telescope made of the teleport mirror effect utilizes a type of radiation that propagates faster than light."
Rhine nodded. "If celestial bodies can travel faster than light," she said, "it stands to reason that some form of energy can travel faster than light also. After all, matter is one form of energy."
Carroll smiled quietly. "This is negative matter," he said. "And so far as I have been able to calculate, the only thing that can avoid the Einstein increase in mass with increase in energy would be some object having negative mass. But negative mass is as meaningless a term as negative energy."
"A gentleman by the name of Dirac got the Nobel Prize for postulating states of negative kinetic energy," said Rhine.
"The positron," nodded Carroll.
"Then it must make sense."
"It does. A normal body possessing energy tends to dissipate that energy by transferring the excess to other bodies possessing less than it does. A body possessing negative energy would demand that energy be applied to it in order for it to acquire a state of energy equilibrium.
"The positron, according to Dirac, is a state of negative kinetic energy which is satisfied only when the energy of an electron is applied to it. In the process known as 'pair-production', where hard gamma strikes matter and releases an electron and a positron, it is actually a case of separating the electron from its positron, leaving in effect a 'hole' in the level of energy.
"It is a man whose bills are not paid but are merely covered by written and certified checks. Send away one check and you have a debit in the man's account. The positron is satisfied very quickly, however, since there is a large excess of free electrons to fall into place.
"These cancel the positron—and that process produces hard gamma rays again—of the same energy content as required to cause the 'pair production' in the first place. About one million electron volts plus," he added.
She hesitated a moment.
"Now—about this negative mass," she said.
"Simple," he said. "Very simple. A negative mass is the only thing that can exceed the speed of light. Similarly negative energy is the only kind that can propagate in excess of light. So now let's juggle equations until we can reproduce the same."
Rhine nodded, picked up a pencil and then looked at him expectantly.
"Put down," he said with a smile, "the first equation that ever told the truth about the relationship between mass and energy. Energy 'E' equals Mass 'M' times the squared speed of light, 'C2'."
"And from there?"
"And from there we start juggling until we find out how to introduce the negative factor. And I do not mean by dividing by the square root of minus one," he told her.
Doctor Pollard looked up at the man who stood before his desk. "Mr. Galloway," he said, "You may believe yourself normally right but you are ethically wrong."
"Morals and ethics be hanged!" snarled Rhine's brother. "That nut has kidnaped my sister again."
"Not without her aid," smiled Pollard.
"Aid be hanged too!" shouted Kingston Galloway. "He tried to kill her once and he may try again."
"Look," said Pollard quietly. "There are times when personality and identity mean nothing. I think well of my life, as much as you think of yours. Yet I'd feel less than human if I permitted myself and my ideas to stand in the way of civilization."
"Stop talking like a superior being and come down to facts," yelled Kingston Galloway.
"I am. James Forrest Carroll is the only man on earth who can save Terra from certain destruction. Your sister can be of help to him."
"How?" demanded Kingston.
"Rita is an excellent librarian. She has the ability to recall facts and figures beyond most people. She has almost an eidetic memory. Whether Carroll is sane or completely schizophrenic-paranoid, his statements and his theories are solid when based upon his own line of reason.
"That his line of reason does not agree with heretofore known physical facts is of no consequence since several of the unsound, unscientific, un-factual reasonings have produced things that work. Unsound as they may seem, they are not unreasonable—excepting to us who can not reason that way."
"Get to the point."
"Whether Carroll urges Rita to display a horde of facts because he thinks they come from an alien mind in a human body, or whether he understands the truth—that they are merely repeats of his own statements made when he does not recall them—the fact remains that Rita is his tabulator, his encyclopedia of fact, his memory. She and she alone can put down concurrently things he has reasoned out, once when himself and next when he is—un-sane."
"But she's in danger!"
"So are we all," replied Pollard easily. "And Rita herself knows the danger. And," he added with a snort of derision, "of what good is your so-called moral integrity going to do you a year from today if James Forrest Carroll is stopped from preventing the calamity due to erase Sol from existence in a month?"
"He's a madman. How can you believe that this danger really exists?"
"The danger is what drove him mad."
"And made him believe that Rita and I are aliens?"
"Merely manifestations of the hallucination."
Kingston Galloway growled in his throat. "I ought to kill you," he snarled. "Not only have you left my sister unprotected, but you've condoned her kidnaping and now you sit there and tell me that the fate of the world lies in the mind of a lunatic."
Pollard smiled. "There have been many historic times when civilization was nearly torn down by a madman. Let history record once when civilization was saved by one."
"At my sister's expense!" Kingston stormed, barely able to control his rage.
Pollard shook his head. Then he said patiently, "James Forrest Carroll was driven mad by this knowledge of inescapable doom, because his subconscious mind knew that the answer was hidden in the realm of physics termed 'unreasonable' to the true physicist.
"Once James Forrest Carroll has succeeded in removing this menace he will know that amnesia and mental retreat are not necessary for the preservation of his sanity. There will undoubtedly be evidences, too, to support the 'unreasonable' physics in terms of what we know to be true. Thus Carroll will be completely self-justified and will be returned to normal."
"You talk a lot about self-justification," snarled Kingston.
"Everybody is self-justified," said Pollard. "Sanity is when the self-justification of the individual is, within certain limits, similar to the self-justification of the average human being. Insanity is when the self-justification of the individual lies outside of reasonable limits. Once Carroll's self-justification—which is one more way of saying his 'viewpoint'—is reasonably similar to others, sanity will return."
"And in the meantime, what about Rita?"
"Rita is at worst a good soldier," said Pollard. "At best, she alone will realize the full truth. But just remember neither morals nor ethics mean a thing to a civilization that has just perished before a nova. And I have more than a little respect for the morals and ethics of both Carroll and your sister under any circumstances."
"But she's my sister and he's—"
"Shut up. You're talking like a fool. They're doing nothing wrong. Stop them and you'll destroy the earth. Perhaps if you'd left him alone—them alone—Carroll might not have identified you with his hallucinatory aliens."
"Yeah? And just what is an alien?" demanded Kingston.
"An alien," smiled Pollard, "is any man who does not think as you do!"
"Bah!" cried Kingston, turning on his heel. He left the office swearing eternal vengeance.
An hour later, Majors came bursting into Pollard's office. "Pollard!" he exclaimed. "Listen! That wildman Kingston Galloway has just collected a gang of his cohorts, friends and buddies and they've all taken off like wildmen. They're heading for Wisconsin!"
"The stupid idiot!" exploded Pollard, coming out of his chair. "Come on!"
Rhinegallis clasped Carroll's arm tightly as she stood beside him and looked at the almost-vibrant blackness that seemed to shimmer in the encircling wire mounted on the wall. Carroll was too busy to pay attention to her clasp.
He was busy adjusting knobs on a haywire equipment on the bench beside him. The shimmering blackness flared briefly at one side, turned milky for an instant near the top—and then a pinprick of utter—nothingness—appeared to one side of the circle.
Carroll adjusted knobs, brought the spot of sheer black into the center of the artificial plate and then expanded it. It was noticeable only because it—as a circle of utter no-response—was less energetic than the misty background.
"That," he said, "is it."
"The negative mass?"
He nodded. "Is the 'fence' ready?"
"Checked."
"Now's as good a time as any," he said laconically. He left the vantage-point and went to another panel in the laboratory and began to throw switches.
Five miles from Carroll's home a ten mile circle of wire came to life. Set on insulators mounted on trees in a rough circle, the area ten miles in diameter shimmered with a thin, misty film of energy—the same energy as that of the teleport.
It thickened as Carroll adjusted the driving gear, thickened and became more positive until it was as shiningly opaque as the teleport screen-mirror. Trees in the circle, cut clean at the surface of the mirror fell, impelled by gravity into the screen. Then above the perfect plane of energy was nothing.
The trimmed trees fell helter-skelter into a deep gorge from a smaller teleport plane twenty miles to the north.
Then the perfect plane bowed downward into a shallow paraboloid of revolution. As it went down the up-thrusting trees were trimmed off and the matter in them converted into energy. A minute but perfect sphere appeared atop a pillar of energy not far from the rim of the paraboloid.
Down went the center of the paraboloid, down into the bowels of the earth, and the sphere of stored energy grew rapidly. Down went the center, deep, until a perfect parabolic reflector ten miles in diameter and twelve miles deep resulted. The cubic mile after cubic mile of earth, rock, water, and forest were stored as energy in the sphere, now a full three feet in diameter.
A landslide started near the rim, and earth rumbled forward down the side of the depression, disappearing as it touched the outside of the energy-shell that was Carroll's reflector. The rim of trees that supported the energizing ring fell into the widening inverted funnel but its job was over. The mirror was stable, held by the energy contained in the perfect sphere on the column near its edge.
The rumbling stopped as stability came. The roar, all of it sheer physical sound from tortured earth, died and left a hollow vacancy in comparison.
Then Carroll took a small set of levers and manipulated them like a man flying a drone airplane. The sphere of energy left the column and was driven over the gaping maw of the mighty reflector. Down it dropped until it was at the exact focus of the paraboloid. There it compressed to almost a point.
"This," said Carroll, "is it!"
He reached for the master switch just as a flashing bolt of coruscating energy dazzled across the room, searing his arm.
"King!" screamed Rhinegallis. "Don't!"
CHAPTER XIII
Last Chance
Through the door swarmed Kingallis and four of his henchmen. They paused to get their bearing and then they plunged forward, shouting. Rhine made ineffective gestures against them—pure instinct, for her senses were shocked by their abrupt appearance.
Carroll cursed. His sense of timing told him that there was no second to waste, yet his right arm hung useless and he was reeling weakly from the shock. They did not fire again as they came swarming across the floor, but their interception of his move was as effective. Kingallis, with an angry shout, caught Carroll and hurled him away from the panel.