Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
In what his spacehound's time sense told him was one second,
Kinnison passed exactly two hundred million foreign spaces. He did
not know how he knew the precise number, but he did. Hence, in the
Patrol's measured cadence, he began to count groups of spaces of
one hundred million each. After a few days, his velocity decreased
to such a value that he could count groups of single millions. Then
thousands--hundreds--tens--until finally he could perceive the salient
features of each space before it was blotted out by the next.
How could this be? He wondered, but not foggily; his mind was as clear
and as strong as it had ever been. Spaces were coexistent, not spread
out like this. In the fourth dimension they were flat together, like
pages in a book, except thinner. This was all wrong. It was impossible.
Since it could not happen, it was not happening. He had not been and
could not be drugged. Therefore some Plooran must have him in a zone of
compulsion. _What_ a zone! _What_ an operator the ape must be!
It was, however, real--all of it. What Kinnison did not know, then
or ever, was that he was actually outside the boundaries of space;
actually beyond the confines of time. He was going past, not through,
those spaces and those times.
He was now in each space long enough to study it in some detail. He was
an immense distance above this one; at such a distance that he could
perceive many globular super-universes; each of which in turn was
composed of billions of lenticular galaxies.
Through it. Closer now. Galaxies only; the familiar random masses whose
apparent lack of symmetrical grouping is due to the limitations of
Civilization's observers. He was still going too fast to stop.
In the next space Kinnison found himself within the limits of a solar
system and tried with all the force of his mind to get in touch with
some intelligent entity upon one--any one--of its planets. Before he
could succeed, the system vanished and he was dropping, from a height
of a few thousand kilometers, toward the surface of a warm and verdant
world, so much like Tellus that he thought for an instant that he
must have circumnavigated total space. The aspect, the ice-caps, the
cloud-effects, were identical. The oceans, however, while similar,
were different; as were the continents. The mountains were larger and
rougher and harder.
He was falling much too fast. A free fall from infinity wouldn't give
him _this_ much speed!
This whole affair was, as he had decided once before, absolutely
impossible. It was simply preposterous to believe that a naked man,
especially one without blood circulation or breath, could still be
alive after spending as many weeks in open space as he had just spent.
He _knew_ that he was alive. Therefore none of this was happening;
even though, as surely as he knew that he was alive, he knew that he
was falling.
"Jet back, Lensman!" he thought viciously to himself; tried to shout
it aloud.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account