LITMIR.BIZ

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laughed. “My dear girl, if you’ve any bright ideas, then let us have them!”

      “It’s a simple idea. Since we can’t go backwards in time—what’s wrong with going forward?”

      “We could do it,” Abna assured her. “Just as easily as we came from the atomic space—”

      “But it would be of no benefit,” the Amazon insisted. “The Earth and sun are dying even at this stage: to go forward would only make that fact more certain. We’d finally find the world crumbling into cosmic dust, the sun a dead star, and ourselves float­ing in space prior to our own inevi­table annihilation.”

      “So I think,” Abna commented.

      Viona said: “‘I seem to remember a theory was once propounded by a scientist famous in his day—Jeans I think his name was—that worlds have their own particular time orbit, independent of the great sea of time in which all the universe moves.”

      “Meaning what?” the Amazon asked.

      “Meaning that maybe when Earth has come to the end of her time orbit, she starts all over again from the beginning. Why not? That is the basis of the Cyclic Universe theory, namely that all universes die out and renew themselves from pent-up cosmic forces—just as the cycle of nature everlastingly repeats. Death in the fall and renewal in the spring. Since we can’t go backwards, we might as well try going forward and see if we don’t find ourselves at the start of the circular Earth time orbit again.”

      “Having a definite logic,” the Amazon said, “I think we ought to try it.”

      “Agreed,” Abna nodded. “Let us start. Traveling forward will not be nearly so difficult to integrate men­tally as that journey from Smallness. Stand here beside me, link your hands in mine, and I’ll see what I can do.”

      So for the second time Abna once again threw every vestige of his immense intellectual power into the problem—and as before he and the two women gradually became disso­ciated from all consciousness of their bodies while their mental eyes remained wide open.

      As though they were omnipotent observers, they saw Earth speed onwards in time until it was a dark and frigid world, caked in ice from pole to pole, the last rays of the fading sun casting back redly from it. And ere long, even these rays ceased as the sun became a burned-out star.

      With the endless progression of time, even the dead star crumbled into a black hole, and there was nothing but the eternal cosmos and the blaze of stars and nebulae. Then, for the disem­bodied three, there came a brief sense of tremendous strain that quickly passed. All three of them knew that they had crossed the barrier at the end of the Earth time-circuit, had reached its absolute maximum, and that beyond it in the everlasting circle must lie the conditions known as ad­vancing time. They had come back to the beginning of the circle and were still going forward.

      For a while nothing changed on the face of the cosmic deeps, then out of remoteness a swirling nebula swung into view moving with a stupendous velocity. Probably its apparent velocity was so tremendous because of the speed at which the mentally traveling three were hurtling. Whatever the exact factors involved, they were the witnesses of enormous concentrations of incandescent gases contracting in upon themselves, forming into distinct stellar systems.

      Space was white and trembling, shivering with inconceivable radiations and forces as the several of these proto-stars collided in the cosmic maelstrom. One of the outflung flaming fragments was seen to coalesce into one stupendous dark island.… But it was now no longer dark. It flamed, coalesced, liquefied into blinding grandeur as its latent atomic powers were imploded by stupendous gravitational forces.

      Perhaps ages passed, which the disembodied three could not calculate, but they saw the several ring-like filaments break away from the central core, whirl, and then condense into globes and slowly cool­ing worlds. They no longer needed to wonder if they had made the correct move. The proof of it lay there before them. They were even now speed­ing across the period of the Solar System’s birth, so inevitably they saw the planets cool off, give birth to moons in most cases, and follow the inevitable law of the time-circle there­after.

      Abna changed his concentration somewhat so that the three found themselves apparently on Earth itself, and yet apart from it and untouched by the furies and storms of those very early days. They beheld tempest and hurricane, sunlight and calm. They swept through the kaleidoscope of hurtling ages, through the forests and swamps of primeval time, through the Glacial Epochs and Antediluvian ages.

      Onward and onward to the first remote signs of civilization, and then the blur of the speeding centuries wherein man rose to a zenith and crumbled down again. Lost in an­tiquity became the epoch of the Egypt­ian dynasties and, instead, modern civilization was already growing. So through the ages of steam, of water, of the first flights, through the chaos and confusion of wars, beyond the Atomic age and the smashing of the sound barrier; still on to the age of the interplanetary travel, to the era of the Golden Amazon and her rule of the System.

      And, suddenly, journeying ceased. The Amazon and Viona both realized at the same moment that they were standing on a high rise of ground to the north of modern London. Abna was near to them, smiling in triumph.

      “You were right Viona,” he said. “The Time-circle is continuous, and here we are right back in the period from which our adventure into Smallness began.… It seems to me it is time we went home and considered the vastness of the thing we have accomplished.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      STRANGE ACTIONS FOR VIONA

      They returned home quietly and without attracting undue attention. Here and there a passerby immediately recog­nized them, wondered perhaps at their travel-stained appearance, but did not ask questions. Since the Amazon and Abna represented Earth and the Sys­tem’s center of government, no inter­rogation of them could be countenanced.

      So they came back to that strange house in outer London—the great residence with the photoelectric pillars down the driveway and the curious aerials and scientific detectors on the roof.

      The door opened before their combined thought-waves and then relocked itself as they passed into the lounge from the hall.

      The Amazon spoke first.

      “Throughout my career home has never meant anything much,” she confessed, “but this time it is different. There is something wonderful about returning to it after twice thinking we’d never see it again. And it is all owing to you, Abna. I’m not a very grateful person as a rule, but this time I do thank you for all you’ve done from the bottom of my heart:”

      “Nothing at all,” Abna grinned. “Blame it all onto our erring daughter here. She thought of it.”

      Viona did not answer. She was sprawled on the divan, her copper-colored hair tumbling about her shoulders, a far-away and curiously puzzled light in her blue eyes. She did not even appear to hear her father’s com­ment—until he directly addressed her.

      “What’s the matter, Viona? Falling asleep?”

      “Oh, no! Sorry!” She straight­ened up and gave her mother and father a queer glance. “Just some­thing I was thinking about.… Time we had a meal, isn’t it?”

      She went over to the radio button, which would automatically set a meal into the process of preparation in the domestic regions. To the Amazon it was more than plain that Viona had thought of the meal as a means of preventing any more questions being directed at herself.

      “Home, sweet home,” Abna murmured, relaxing his great frame into the armchair. “I suppose there are times when it is useful to behave as a god—but I hope I never have to do it again. It becomes wearing.”

      The Amazon did not comment. She was watching Viona. The girl had strolled to one of the great windows and was looking out absently into the grounds, the sunlight emphasizing the slender strength of her young figure in the slacks and blouse. It was more than plain that something was on her mind, or else she had not yet fully recovered from the awe-inspiring men­tal journeys

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