Wanderer of Infinity

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  Wanderer of Infinity

  By Harl Vincent

  * * * * *

  [Sidenote: In the uncharted realms of infra-dimensional space Bertmeets a pathetic figure--The Wanderer.]

  Lenville! Bert Redmond had never heard of the place until he receivedJoan's letter. But here it was, a tiny straggling village cuddledamongst the Ramapo hills of lower New York State, only a few milesfrom Tuxedo. There was a prim, white-painted church, a general storewith the inevitable gasoline pump at the curb, and a dozen or so ofweatherbeaten frame houses. That was all. It was a typical, dustycross-roads hamlet of the vintage of thirty years before, utterlyisolated and apart from the rushing life of the broad concrete highwayso short a distance away.

  Bert stopped his ancient and battered flivver at the corner where agroup of overalled loungers was gathered. Its asthmatic motor diedwith a despairing cough as he cut the ignition.

  "Anyone tell me where to find the Carmody place?" he sang out.

  No one answered, and for a moment there was no movement amongst hislisteners. Then one of the loungers, an old man with a stubble of graybeard, drew near and regarded him through thick spectacles.

  "You ain't aimin' to go up there alone, be you?" the old fellow askedin a thin cracked voice.

  "Certainly. Why?" Bert caught a peculiar gleam in the watery old eyesthat were enlarged so enormously by the thick lenses. It was fear ofthe supernatural that lurked there, stark terror, almost.

  "Don't you go up to the Carmody place, young feller. They's queerdoin's in the big house, is why. Blue lights at night, an' noisesinside--an'--an' cracklin' like thunder overhead--"

  "Aw shet up, Gramp!" Another of the idlers, a youngster with chubbyfeatures, and downy of lip and chin, sauntered over from the group,interrupting the old man's discourse. "Don't listen to him," he saidto Bert. "He's cracked a mite--been seein' things. The big house is upyonder on the hill. See, with the red chimbley showin' through thetrees. They's a windin' road down here a piece."

  Bert followed the pointing finger with suddenly anxious gaze. It wasnot an inviting spot, that tangle of second-growth timber andunderbrush that hid the big house on the lonely hillside; it mightconceal almost anything. And Joan Parker was there!

  The one called Gramp was screeching invectives at the grinningbystanders. "You passel o' young idjits!" he stormed. "I seen it, Itell you. An'--an' heard things, too, The devil hisself is upthere--an' his imps. We'd oughtn't to let this feller go...."

  _He attacked it in vain with his fists._]

  Bert waited to hear no more. Unreasoning fear came to him thatsomething was very much amiss up there at the big house, and hestarted the flivver with a thunderous barrage of its exhaust.

  The words of Joan's note were vivid in his mind: "Come to me, Bert, atthe Carmody place in Lenville. Believe me, I need you." Only that, butit had been sufficient to bring young Redmond across three states tothis measly town that wasn't even on the road maps.

  Bert yanked the bouncing car into the winding road that led up thehill, and thought grimly of the quarrel with Joan two years before. Hehad told her then, arrogantly, that she'd need him some day. But nowthat his words had proved true the fact brought him no consolationnor the slightest elation. Joan was there in this lonely spot, and shedid need him. That was enough.

  He ran nervous fingers through his already tousled mop of sandyhair--a habit he had when disturbed--and nearly wrecked the car on agray boulder that encroached on one of the two ruts which, together,had been termed a road.

  Stupid, that quarrel of theirs. And how stubborn both had been! Joanhad insisted on going to the big city to follow the career herbrother had chosen for her. Chemistry, biology, laboratory work! Bertsniffed, even now. But he had been equally stubborn in his insistencethat she marry him instead and settle down on the middle-Western fruitfarm.

  With a sudden twist, the road turned in at the entrance of a sadlyneglected estate. The grounds of the place were overrun with rankgrowths and the driveway was covered with weeds. The tumble-downgables of a descrepit frame house peeped out through the trees. It wasa rambling old building that once had been a mansion--the "big house"of the natives. A musty air of decay was upon it, and crazily askewwindow shutters proclaimed deep-shrouded mystery within.

  Bert drew up at the rickety porch and stopped the flivver with itsusual shuddering jerk.

  * * * * *

  As if his coming had been watched for through the stained glass of itswindows, the door was flung violently open. A white-clad figure dartedacross the porch, but not before Bert had untangled the lean six feetof him from under the flivver's wheel and bounded up the steps.

  "Joan!"

  "Bert! I--I'm sorry."

  "Me too." Swallowing hard, Bert Redmond held her close.

  "But I won't go back to Indiana!" The girl raised her chin and the olddefiance was in her tearful gaze.

  Bert stared. Joan was white and wan, a mere shadow of her old self.And she was trembling, hysterical.

  "That's all right," he whispered. "But tell me now, what is it? What'swrong?"

  With sudden vigor she was drawing him into the house. "It's Tom," shequavered. "I can't do a thing with him; can't get him to leave here.And something terrible is about to happen, I know. I thought perhapsyou could help, even if--"

  "Tom Parker here?" Bert was surprised that the fastidious olderbrother should leave his comfortable city quarters and lose himself inthis God-forsaken place. "Sure, I'll help, dear--if I can."

  "You can; oh, I'm sure you can," the girl went on tremulously. A spotof color flared in either cheek. "It's his experiments. He came overfrom New York about a year ago and rented this old house. The citylaboratory wasn't secluded enough. And I've helped him until now ineverything. But I'm frightened; he's playing with dangerous forces. Hedoesn't understand--won't understand. But I saw...."

  And then Joan Parker slumped into a high-backed chair that stood inthe ancient paneled hall. Soft waves of her chestnut hair framed thepinched, terrified face, and wide eyes looked up at Bert, with thesame horror he had seen in those of the old fellow the village. Asurge of the old tenderness welled up in him and he wanted to take herin his arms.

  "Wait," she said, swiftly rising. "I'll let you judge for yourself.Here--go into the laboratory and talk with Tom."

  She pushed him forward and through a door that closed softly behindhim. He was in a large room that was cluttered with the mostbewildering array of electrical mechanisms he had ever seen. Joan hadremained outside.

  * * * * *

  Tom Parker, his hair grayer and forehead higher than when Bert hadseen him last, rose from where he was stooping over a work bench. Headvanced, smiling, and his black eyes were alight with genuinepleasure. Bert had anticipated a less cordial welcome.

  "Albert Redmond!" exclaimed the older man. "This is a surprise. Gladto see you, boy, glad to see you."

  He meant it, Tom did, and Bert wrung the extended hand heartily. Yethe dared not tell of Joan's note. The two men had always been the verybest of friends--except in the matter of Joan's future.

  "You haven't changed much," Bert ventured.

  Tom Parker laughed. "Not about Joan, if that is what you mean. Shelikes the work and will go far in it. Why, Bert--"

  "Sa-ay, wa
it a minute." Bert Redmond's mien was solemn. "I saw heroutside, Tom, and was shocked. She isn't herself--doesn't look at allwell. Haven't you noticed, man?"

  The older man sobered and a puzzled frown crossed his brow. "I havenoticed, yes. But it's nonsense, Bert, I swear it is. She has beenhaving dreams--worrying a lot, it seems. Guess I'll have to send herto the doctor?"

  "Dreams? Worry?" Bert thought of the old man called Gramp.

  "Yes. I'll tell you all about it--what we're working on here--and showyou. It's no wonder she gets that way, I guess. I've been a bit loonywith the marvel of it myself at times. Come here."

  Tom led him to an intricate apparatus which bore some resemblance to atelevision radio. There were countless vacuum tubes and theircontrols, tiny motors belted to slotted disks that would spin whenpower was applied, and a double eyepiece.

  "Before I let you look," Tom was saying, "I'll give you an idea of it,to prepare you. This is a mechanism I've developed for a study of theless-understood dimensions. The results have more than justified myexpectations--they're astounding. Bert, we can actually see into theserealms that were hitherto unexplored. We can examine at close rangethe life of these other planes. Think of it!"

  "Life--plane--dimensions?" said Bert blankly. "Remember, I know verylittle about this science of yours."

  * * * * *

  "Haven't you read the news-paper accounts of Einstein's researches andof others who have delved into the theory of relativity?"

  "Sa-ay! I read them, but they don't tell me a thing. It's over my heada mile."

  "Well, listen: this universe of ours--space and all it contains--is athing of five dimensions, a continuum we have never begun tocontemplate in its true complexity and immensity. There are three ofits dimensions with which we are familiar. Our normal senses perceiveand understand them--length, breadth and thickness. The fourthdimension, time, or, more properly, the time-space interval, we haveonly recently understood. And this fifth dimension, Bert, is somethingno man on earth has delved into--excepting myself."

  "You don't say." Bert was properly impressed; the old gleam of theenthusiastic scientist was in Tom's keen eyes.

  "Surest thing. I have called this fifth dimension the interval ofoscillation, though the term is not precisely correct. It has to dowith the arrangement, the speed and direction of movement, and thepolarity of protonic and electronic energy charges of which matter iscomprised. It upsets some of our old and accepted natural laws--one inparticular. Bert, two objects can occupy the same space at the sametime, though only one is perceptible to our earthbound senses. Theirdifferently constituted atoms exist in the same location withoutinterference--merely vibrating in different planes. There are manysuch planes in this fifth dimension of space, all around us, someactually inhabited. Each plane has a different atomic structure ofmatter, its own oscillation interval of the energy that is matter, anda set of natural laws peculiar to itself. I can't begin to tell you;in fact, I've explored only a fraction. But here--look!"

  * * * * *

  Tom's instrument set up a soft purring at his touch of a lever, andeery blue light flickered from behind the double eyepiece, castinggrotesque shadows on walls and ceiling, and paling to insignificancethe light of day that filtered through the long-unwashed windows.

  Bert squinted through the hooded twin lenses. At first he was dazzledand confused by the rapidly whirling light-images, but these quicklyresolved into geometric figures, an inconceivable number of them,extending off into limitless space in a huge arc, revolving andtumbling like the colored particles in an old-fashioned kaleidoscope.Cubes, pyramids and cones of variegated hues. Swift-rushing spheresand long slim cylinders of brilliant blue-white; gleaming disks ofpolished jet, spinning....

  Abruptly the view stabilized, and clear-cut stationary objects spranginto being. An unbroken vista of seamed chalky cliffs beside an inkysea whose waters rose and fell rhythmically yet did not break againstthe towering palisade. Wave-less, glass-smooth, these waters. A hugeblood-red sun hanging low in a leaden though cloudless sky, reflectingscintillating flecks of gold and purple brilliance from the ocean'sblack surface.

  At first there was no sign of life to be seen. Then a mound was risingup from the sea near the cliff, a huge tortoiselike shape thatstretched forth several flat members which adhered to the verticalwhite wall is if held by suction disks. Ponderously the thing turnedover and headed up from the inky depths, spewing out from its concaveunder side an army of furry brown bipeds. Creatures with bloatedtorsos in which head and body merged so closely as to beindistinguishable one from the other, balanced precariously on twospindly legs, and with long thin arms like tentacles, waving andcoiling. Spiderlike beings ran out over the smooth dark surface of thesea as if it were solid ground.

  * * * * *

  "Jupiter!" Bert looked up from the eyepiece, blinking into thetriumphant grinning face of Tom Parker. "You mean to tell me thesecreatures are real?" he demanded. "Living here, all around us, inanother plane where we can't see them without this machine of yours?"

  "Surest thing. And this is but one of many such planes."

  "They can't get through, to our plane?"

  "Lord no, man, how could they?"

  A sharp crackling peal of thunder rang out overhead and Tom Parkerwent suddenly white. Outside, the sky was cloudless.

  "And that--what's that?" Bert remembered the warning of the old man ofthe village, and Joan's obvious fear.

  "It--it's only a physical manifestation of the forces I use inobtaining visual connection, one of the things that worries Joan. YetI can't find any cause for alarm...."

  The scientist's voice droned on endlessly, technically. But Bert knewthere was something Tom did not understand, something he was tryingdesperately to explain to himself.

  Thunder rumbled once more, and Bert returned his eyes to theinstrument. Directly before him in the field of vision a group of thespider men advanced over the pitchy sea with a curiously constructedcage of woven transparent material which they set down at a point soclose by that it seemed he could touch it if he stretched out hishand. The illusion of physical nearness was perfect. The evil eyes ofthe creatures were fastened upon him; tentacle arms uncoiled andreached forth as if to break down the barrier that separated them.

  And then a scream penetrated his consciousness, wrenching him back toconsideration of his immediate surroundings. The laboratory door burstopen and Joan, pale and disheveled, dashed into the room.

  * * * * *

  Tom shouted, running forward to intercept her, and Bert saw what hehad not seen before, a ten-foot circle of blue-white metal set in thefloor and illuminated by a shaft of light from a reflector on theceiling above Tom's machine.

  "Joan--the force area!" Tom was yelling. "Keep away!"

  Tom had reached the distraught girl and was struggling with her overon the far side of the disk.

  There came a throbbing of the very air surrounding them, and Bert sawTom and Joan on the other side of the force area, their white facesindistinct and wavering as if blurred by heat waves rising between.The rumblings and cracklings overhead increased in intensity until theold house swayed and creaked with the concussions. Hazy formsmaterialized on the lighted disk--the cage of the transparent, wovenbasket--dark spidery forms within. The creatures from that otherplane!

  "Joan! Tom!" Bert's voice was soundless as he tried to shout, and hismuscles were paralyzed when he attempted to hurl himself across tothem. The blue-white light had spread and formed a huge bubble ofwhite brilliance, a transparent elastic solid that flung him back whenhe attacked it in vain with his fists.

  Within its confines he saw Joan and her brother scuffling with thespider men, tearing at the tentacle arms that encircled them and drewthem relentlessly into the basket-weave cage. There was a tremendousthump and the warping of the very universe about them all. BertRedmond, his body racked by insupportable tortures, was hur
led intothe black abyss of infinity....

  * * * * *

  This was not death nor was it a dream from which he would awaken.After that moment of mental agony and ghastly physical pain, after adizzying rush through inky nothingness, Bert knew suddenly that he wasvery much alive. If he had lost consciousness at all, it had been forno great length of time. And yet there was this sense of strangenessin his surroundings, a feeling that he had been transported over somenameless gulf of space. He had dropped to his knees, but with theswift return of normal faculties he jumped to his feet.

  A tall stranger confronted him, a half-nude giant with bronzed skinand of solemn visage. The stalwart build of him and the smoothcontours of cheek and jaw proclaimed him a man not yet past middleage, but his uncropped hair was white as the driven snow.

  They stood in a spherical chamber of silvery metal, Bert and thisgiant, and the gentle vibration of delicately balanced machinery madeitself felt in the structure. Of Joan and Tom there was no sign.

  "Where am I?" Bert demanded. "And where are my friends? Why am I withyou, without them?"

  Compassion was in the tall stranger's gaze--and something more. Thepain of a great sorrow filled the brown eyes that looked down at Bert,and resignation to a fate that was shrouded in ineffable mystery.

  "Trust me," he said in a mellow slurring voice. "Where you are, youshall soon learn.