When we approached closer I saw that the vehicles were not of solid structure, but that the sides seemingly woven of wire-mesh--or woven of thick fabric strands.[4]
[4] The vehicles were constructed of a material allied in character to that used for garments by the people of this realm. It was not metal, but an organic vegetable substance.
The army of white figures crowded around the vehicles. Boxes, white woven cases, projectors and a variety of disks and dials and wire mechanisms were being loaded aboard. And the men were marching in to take their places for the journey.
Tako gestured. "There is our carrier."
It was one of the smallest vehicles--low and streamlined, so that it suggested a fat-bellied cigar, white-wrapped. It stood alone, a little apart from the others, with no confusion around it. The green-lighted windows in its sides goggled at us.
We entered a small porte at its forward pointed end. The control room was here, a small cubby of levers and banks of dial-faces.
Three men, evidently the operators, sat within. They were dressed like Tako save that they each had a great round lens like a monocle on the left eye, with dangling wires from it leading to dials fastened to the belt.
Tako greeted them with a gesture and a gruff word and pushed us past them into the car. We entered a low narrow white corridor with dim green lights in its vaulted room. Sliding doors to compartments opened from one side of it. Two were closed; one was partly open. As we pa.s.sed, Tako called softly:
"All is well with you, Tolla?"
"Yes," came the girl"s soft voice.
I met Don"s gaze. I stopped short and called:
"Are you all right, Jane?"
I was immensely relieved as she answered, "Yes, Bob."
Tako shoved me roughly. "You presume too much."
The corridor opened into one main room occupying the full ten-foot width of the vehicle and its twenty-foot middle section. Low soft couch seats were here, and a small table with food and drink upon it; and on another table low to the floor, with a mat-seat beside it, a litter of small mechanical devices had been deposited. I saw among them two or three of the green-light hand weapons.
Tako followed my gaze and laughed. "You are transparent. If you knew how to use those weapons, do you think I would leave them near you?"
We were still garbed in the white garments, but the disks and wires and helmet had been taken from us.
"I say, you needn"t be so suspicious," Don protested. "We"re not so absolutely foolish. But if you want any advice from us on how to attack New York, you"ve got to explain how your weapons are used."
Tako seated us. "All in good time. We shall have opportunity now to talk."
"About the trip--" I said. "Are we going to New York City?"
"Yes."
"How long will it take?"
"Long? That is difficult to say. Have you not noticed that time in my world has little to do with yours?"
"How long will it seem?" I persisted.
He shrugged. "That is according to your mood. We shall eat once or twice, and get a little sleep."
One of the window openings was beside us with a loosely woven mesh of wires across it. Outside I could see the shifting lights. Men were embarking in the other vehicles; and the blended noise from them floated in to us.
Questions flooded me. This strange journey, what would it be like? I could envisage the invisible little Bermuda in the void of darkness over us now; or here in this same s.p.a.ce around us. No, we had climbed from where we landed in the s.p.a.ce close under the Paget hilltop. And we had walked forward for perhaps an hour. The s.p.a.ce of Bermuda would be behind us and lower down. This then was the open ocean. I gazed at the solid rocky surface outside our window. Nearly seven hundred miles away must be New York City. We were going there.
How? Would it be called flying? Or following this rocky surface?
As though to answer my thoughts Tako gestured to the window. "See.
The first carrier starts away."
The carrier lay like a stiff white reptile on the ground. Its doors were closed, and watching men stood back from it.
Don gasped, "Why--it"s fading! A transition!"
It glowed along all its length and grew tenuous of aspect, until in a moment that solid thing which had been solidly resting there on a rock was a wraith of vehicle. A great oblong apparition--the ghost of a reptile with round green spots on its sides. A fading wraith.
But it did not quite disappear. Hovering just within visibility, it slowly, silently slid forward. It seemed, without changing its level, to pa.s.s partly through an upstanding crag which stood in its path. Distance dimmed it, dwindled it; and in a moment it was gone into the night.
"We will start," said Tako abruptly. "Sit where you are. There will be a little shock, much like the transition coming in from your world." He called, "Tolla, we start."
A signal-dial was on the room wall near him. He rose and pressed its lever. There was a moment of silence. Then the current went on. It permeated every strand of the material of which the vehicle was constructed. It contacted with our bodies. I felt the tingle of it; felt it running like fire through my veins. The whole interior was humming. There was a shock to my senses, swiftly pa.s.sing, followed by a sense of weightless freedom. But that lightness was an illusion, a comparison with externals only, for the seat to which I clung remained solid, and my body pressed upon it with a feeling of normal weight.
Outside the window, the dark scene of rocks and vehicles and men was fading; turning ghostly, shadowy, spectral. But it did not quite vanish; it held its wraithlike outlines, and in a moment began sliding silently backward. It seemed that we also pa.s.sed through a little b.u.t.te of rocks. Then we emerged again into the open; and, as we gathered speed, the vague spectral outlines of a rocky landscape slid past us in a bewildering panorama.
We were away upon the journey.[5]
[5] What we learned of the science of the invisible realm was perforce picked piecemeal by us from all that we saw, experienced, and what several different times Tako was willing to explain to us. And it was later studied by the scientists of our world, whose additional theories I can incorporate into my own knowledge. Yet much of it remains obscure. And it is so intricate a subject that even if I understood it fully I could do no more than summarize here its fundamental principles.
The s.p.a.ce-transition of these vehicles, Tako had already told us, was closely allied to the transition from his world to ours. And the weapons were of the same principles. The science of s.p.a.ce-transition, limited to travel from one portion of the realm to another, quite evidently came first.
The weapons, the forcible, abrupt transition of material objects out of the realm into other dimensions--into the Unknown--this principle was developed from the traveling.
And from them both Tako himself evolved the safe and controlled transition from his world to ours.
Concerning the operation of these vehicles: Motion, in our Earth-world or any other, is the progressive change of a material object in relation to its time and s.p.a.ce. It is here now, but it _was there_. Both s.p.a.ce and time undergo a simultaneous change; the object itself remains unaltered, save in its _position_.
In the case of the vehicles, the current I have already mentioned (used in the mechanism for the transition from Earth to the other realm) that current, circulating in the organic material of which the vehicle was composed, altered the state of matter of the carrier and everything within the aura of the current"s field. The vehicle and all its contents, with altered inherent vibratory rate of its molecules, atoms and electrons, was in effect projected into another world. A new dimension was added to it. It became an imponderable wraith, resting dimly visible in a sort of borderland upon the fringe of its own world.
Yet it had not changed _position_. It still remained quiescent. Then the current was further altered, and the time and s.p.a.ce co-ordinates set into new combinations. This change of the current was a _progressive_ change. Controlled and carefully calculated by what intricate theoretic principles and practical mechanisms no scientist of our world can yet say.
It is clear, however, that as this progressive change in s.p.a.ce-time characteristics began, the vehicle perforce must move slightly in s.p.a.ce and time to reconcile itself to the change.
There never has been a seemingly more abstruse subject for the human mind to grasp than the theories involving a true conception of s.p.a.ce-time. Yet, doubtless, to those of Tako"s realm, inheriting, let me say, the consciousness of its reality, there was nothing abstruse about it.
An a.n.a.logy may make it clearer. The vehicle, hovering in the borderland, might be called in a visible but gaseous state.
A solid can be turned to gas merely by the alteration of the vibratory rate of its molecules.
This unmoving (gaseous) vehicle, is now further altered in s.p.a.ce-time characteristics. Suppose we say it is very slightly thrown out of tune with its _spatial_ surroundings at the time which is its _present_. Nature will allow no such disorganization. The vehicle, as a second of _time_ pa.s.ses, is impelled by the force of nature to be in a _different place_. This involves motion. A small change in the first second. Then the current alters it progressively faster. The change, of necessity, is progressively greater, the motion more rapid.
And this, controlled as to direction, became transportation.