all its forms could move. Without ether-of-space, as Eddington called it, there would be a total vacuum with no power to transmit radiation. It used to be thought that because of ether we see the stars by their light-waves, we feel the heat of the sun as his radiations are carried to us, and we hear radio, all because of the ether medium. Modern science subsequently showed that electromagnetic waves did not require any ether medium for their propagation. But they do require what we might call the fabric of space-time itself. Destroy that and we are alone indeed.”
“You mean it can be destroyed?”
“I mean,” the Amazon answered grimly, “that it is being destroyed. That is the meaning of that Smudge—as I will call it—out in infinity. How it came into being I don’t know, but I do know that it is growing rapidly, expanding like an explosion, and at a speed greater than light itself. As it travels, all light and heat ceases. Stars which have been engulfed in it are giving no light or heat.”
“Maybe they’ve been destroyed?”
“No. The mass detectors, which operate by displacement of bulk, show they are still there.”
There was silence for a moment, and it was an uncomfortable one as far as Chris was concerned. Many a time in the past when a particular danger had threatened, he had discussed it first with the superwoman, just as he was doing now, but he had always found her confident of mastering the situation. It was a disturbing change to find her brows notched in uneasy thought and the coffee forgotten at her side.
“It may go away as strangely as it was born,” Chris suggested, but the Amazon shook her head.
“Things born in space do not go away like that, Chris. They grow. In the end, if space-time itself is wiped out, it will mean that all the hosts of the universe will exist in a silent, utterly cold tomb in which no light waves, no heat waves—nothing can ever move. Can you imagine Earth like that? Absolute extinction of life because it cannot see or keep warm. That is what it amounts to.”
“How long will it take to get here—this Dark?”
“As yet I haven’t worked it out. I can do so in thirty minutes on the computer.”
They went into the observatory, and while the Amazon worked with the mathematical instruments Chris looked at a film recording the Amazon had made the previous night. He saw for himself the awe-inspiring sight of an island of night amidst the blaze of the stars.
“Three years—maybe more,” the Amazon said finally. “It all depends whether its faster-than-light acceleration continues to increase exponentially, or whether it reaches an optimum speed and remains constant. If its present acceleration is maintained, then three years will see Earth blacked out—and to try and escape it by flying to other worlds will not do any good, since they too will succumb until all the universe is dark and dead.”
“But Vi, a thing as gigantic as this couldn’t just happen. It upsets all known laws.”
The Amazon was silent for a moment or two, then at length she made up her mind.
“I’m going to take a look at that Dark at close quarters,” she said. “Telescopically I cannot sum it up. Its distance is so colossal that even though I travelled at the speed of light, I’d be several years reaching it.”
“Then how can you reach it?”
“I will use my dissembly transportation method—dissemble my body and recreate it in space near enough to the Dark to study it. My prototype apparatus was limited to the speed of light, but since then I have modified it to operate through the fourth dimension. By that means I can foreshorten space and transmit myself many times faster than light if need be.”
Chris shrugged. “You’re talking way above my head, Vi. I shall have to leave it to you. Just let me know what you discover, and if there is anything I can do to help.…”
“Hardly.” the Amazon said, smiling drily. “If this problem taxes even me, haw do you hope to grapple with it?”
Chris did not respond. It was not the first time the Amazon had made him realize that compared to her, his brain was only equal to that of a new-born infant.
CHAPTER THREE
EVEN THE AMAZON IS BAFFLED
After Chris had departed, the Amazon spent two hours sleeping and then, refreshed, she went calmly about the task of preparing for her gigantic journey. She made her arrangements with the methodical precision of the true scientist. First she drew on a spacesuit, complete to the helmet—since she would resolve in the void itself at the end of her journey—and to it she fastened all the instruments she was likely to need. They included a brain-vibration telewriter, which, responding to her thoughts, would write down whatever notes she wished to make.
This done, she set the dissembling equipment beam to the required distance as given on the computer, and then she threw in the time switch and stepped onto the transmission plate. Presently the moment of dissolution came and, though she was steeled to it from previous experience, it was again an exquisite anguish as every atom of her being was broken down into its energy equivalent—including the spacesuit—and hurled through hyperspace at an incredible velocity.
During the transition the Amazon herself was as completely lost to consciousness as one under powerful anaesthetic. The sense of returning life brought her to opening her eyes and she looked through the transparent visor of her helmet. She was suspended in empty space, just as she had calculated, so far from the nearest appreciable gravity field that she could not drift towards it. She was utterly motionless and would remain so until the apparatus on faraway Earth reversed its action and snatched her back whence she had come.
She turned her head slowly. There, no more than a few billion miles away, was the awesome barrier of the Dark. At such relatively close quarters it was terrifying, seeming to be sweeping inward like a titanic shadow and blotting out nebulae and stardust in its advance. The more she looked at it, the more the Amazon realized she might even be enveloped within it if the apparatus did not react exactly to the second she had calculated.
She pressed the button on her breastplate, which actuated the various instruments strapped to the outside of her suit. Each one in its respective way registered some particular aspect of the mystery, then via her telewriter she gave her own mental reactions to the Dark. And it came nearer, and nearer still. She watched distant stars winking out of existence before the advancing tide, as a lamp might vanish before clouds of smoke.
As she waited, the Amazon was filled for a moment with the consciousness of her own utter insignificance—and audacity. By her own skill she had projected herself to this point in space to gaze upon a mighty cosmic change corning over the face of things, and at the speed it was moving she might pay for it with her life. Still she waited, in ever-growing alarm, and saw the wall of night pouring down on her in a relentless tide. To judge its distance was impossible, as impossible as trying to measure the thickness of a huge shadow.
Then came that moment of unendurable tension and everything snapped out of existence. The next thing she knew the Amazon was struggling to her feet under the apparatus in her laboratory, her spacesuit still about her. Breathing hard, she dragged it off and stepped clear of the transmission plate.
Restorative tablets revived her sufficiently for her to continue working, and for the next two hours she was busy with the instruments on which, stopwatch fashion, she had taken her readings. Three hours later, she had come to an end of her calculations.
She called Chris Wilson—this time at the Space executive building, and he came quickly. Her first words shocked him.
“I’m beaten, Chris. Completely! This isn’t just darkness. It’s a complete flaw in the mathematical makeup of the Universe. The entire Universe is one flawless equation, perfectly balanced. Mathematics have vibrations, and if a vibration came from somewhere which upset the balance by a fraction, the entire Universe would change. That, I think, is what has happened. And the effect is seen in the cancellation of space-time as a known factor. I am not a super-mathematician, Chris, though I am