traveling, so were the bodies. On and on, faster and faster, through soundless emptiness.
Upon the Amazon and Viona there presently settled a dreamy contentment such as they had never experienced in their lives before. They felt entirely secure, embraced as they were in the grip of Abna’s stupendous and yet tender mentality. And he himself, with all the courage that he had always displayed, concentrated further and further, deeper and deeper, using now every mental trick he could think of to overcome the huge mathematical and spatial distances involved.
The atomic universe fell away like dream shadows. Stars and nebulae gyrated. Vast unrelieved blackness swept in, in the midst of which there was only that eternal conviction of stupendous velocity. Then, very gradually, it began to slacken. The feeling of well-being wore off. The Amazon and Viona both realized that they had bodies again, that they were breathing with difficulty, and that they were lying on their backs on something extremely hard.
They opened their eyes.
At first they had the impression they were still upon the barren world. There was the same rocky, friendless plain. But here similarity ended. The sky was black, not blue—and it was not black because it was night, for a vast sun was lying bisected by the jagged horizon. A sun red and dull and swollen, from which life was obviously dying away.
The atmosphere was viciously thin and cold, making it an effort to draw breath. Three normal human beings would probably have suffocated or frozen, but because the trio who now staggered to their feet had superhuman resistance, they managed to survive, and look about them, and wonder.
Their impression on every side was one of infinite loneliness. Not a living thing anywhere. And out of the north a howling wind came suddenly, bringing with it small spears of icy snow. Then it cleared again and the relentless stars were blazing as before.
“What—what’s happened?” Viona asked, baffled. “Where are we, father? Did we make the trip back, or didn’t we?”
“We made it all right.” Abna was looking about him. “But I suppose I can be forgiven for not exactly timing the point of our arrival. It’s pretty clear what has occurred. We’ve come back to Earth, but at a period in its remote future, instead of when civilization was at its height, which was the time we departed from.”
The Amazon said: “Yes, the last days of Earth. The planet is motionless with one face to the sun, slowed down at last by incessant tidal friction. The air is dying out. Even the sun is waning. And all civilization is long since crumbled into dust. We’ve come back, Abna, but to a dead world.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
The women did not question him.
“Yes,” Abna repeated quietly. “I’m sorry. Very inaccurate of me.”’
“It’s done,” the Amazon said, “and we have to get out of it. I assume that since you succeeded in lifting us out of that alien universe via atomic space, you can also overcome this present error of judgment? We certainly can’t stay here. The cold is too intense and the air too thin. And we have no food.… For a while we can survive, perhaps, but in the end—”
Abna nodded. “Obviously, we cannot stay,” he confirmed. “I must meditate again.”
“At least we’ve ditched Quorne at last,” Viona remarked to her mother. “He’s in another plane of matter, and I doubt if he’ll ever have the brains to get back.”
“I wish I could be sure of that,” the Amazon muttered. “Of Quorne we can never be sure until he is destroyed.”
“True, but there is a way of keeping him within our grasp—literally,” Abna remarked.
The two women turned in surprise. They had thought he was concentrating, but apparently he had finished this task, for he was coming over to them.
The Amazon caught at his arm.
“Well, can it be done?”
“You mean get back to our own time? It means working contrary to accumulation—which is advancing time—and I’m not able to do it. You cannot move backwards in Time.”
Viona said: “We can’t stay here!”
Her father shrugged. “Afraid we’ll have to until we can think of something else. We might mentally create shelter and food for ourselves: that wouldn’t be too difficult. After all, I did create an entire city on Saturn.”
“That isn’t the point,” the Amazon insisted. “I don’t doubt you could create a city here if you wanted, but what good would it be to us without the company of others? Without the means to explore; without natural things around us?”
CHAPTER THREE
BACK HOME SAFE AND SOUND
Abna refused to be disturbed. As was his custom after a supreme mental effort, he had become almost schoolboyish, glad to relax completely and throw all his troubles overboard.
“About Quorne,” Abna said, glancing at Viona. “I think we have a way of keeping tabs on him! In our journey from the subatomic wormhole we traveled in a straight line, constantly expanding as we moved until we assumed our present normal size. Since we did move in a straight line, Quorne must be somewhere in the air about us, or at least the sub-atomic gateway to the universe in which he is existing will be.… Let me see now.”
“Can’t we forget Quorne for the moment and concentrate on ourselves?” the Amazon demanded.
“Knowing Quorne’s capabilities, I don’t think we can ever afford to forget him.” Abna took the high-frequency detector from his belt and pressed the release button. Then he smiled as the indicating needle swung and presently became steady, pointing horizontally at nothing in particular.
“Still on him!” Viona exclaimed. “Over all that distance!”
“Distance is relative,” Abna told her. “Our own extreme smallness made the distance seem of staggering proportions. A moment, while I work out some mathematics. I can then tell from this detector exactly where Quorne is.”
That the two women were far more interested in their own fate than Quorne’s Abna knew full well, but he refused to be turned from his purpose. Regardless of the icy wind, he worked out his mathematics with the tiny portable computer in his belt, and then gave a smile.
He said: “The atom of argon, in which lies the wormhole gateway to the universe in which Quorne is stranded, is seventeen feet four inches away from us where the needle is now pointing. Our atmosphere is partly made up of argon, as we know, and that is the point from which we came. We can suck a sample of air into an ampule, which will contain that one argon atom we want—which contains the wormhole entrance to that other universe from which we came—and we can keep the air, and Quorne, sealed in the ampule for as long as we wish.”
“Yes, that’s true enough,” the Amazon agreed, impressed by the simple and yet mighty scientific fact Abna had stated.
From his belt Abna took an air ampule and then, with a spring rule carefully measured the distance of seventeen feet four inches from the detector, which he placed upon the ground. This done, he made some more calculations, then into the ampule he drew a specimen of air and sealed the top.
“Viona, watch that detector,” he instructed, and the girl obeyed. He then proceeded to walk in a circle round the instrument, the air ampule in his hand.
“The needle is pointing to you,” Viona told him. “Everywhere you go the needle goes too.”
“Which means success,” Abna smiled. “The needle is following the ampule, not me. Quorne is safely ‘imprisoned’, indirectly, within this tube. Apart from that one valuable argon molecule there are millions of others—but that is beside the point. We have Quorne all bottled up, and we’ll be fools indeed if we ever let him out!”
With that Abna put the ampule carefully away in the protective slot in his belt, and