Science fiction; Space ships -- Fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
That cabinet became instantly a manifold scanner, all its reels
flashing through as one. Simultaneously there appeared in the air
above the machine a three-dimensional model of all the Galaxies there
listed. A model upon such a scale that the First Galaxy was but a tiny
lenticular pellet, although it was still disproportionately large;
upon such a scale that the whole vast sphere of space covered by the
hundreds of Fenachrone scrolls was compressed into a volume but little
larger than a basketball. And yet each tiny Galactic pellet bore its
own peculiarly individual identifying marks.
Then Dorothy felt as though she herself had been hurled out into the
unthinkable reaches of space. In a fleeting instant of time she passed
through thousands of star clusters, and not only knew the declination,
right ascension, and distance of each Galaxy, but saw it duplicated in
miniature in its exact place in an immense, three-dimensional model in
the hollow interior of the space-flyer in which she actually was.
The mapping went on. To human brains and hands the task would have
been one of countless years. Now, however, it was to prove only a
matter of hours, for this was no human brain. Not only was it reactive
and effective at distances to be expressed in light-years or parsecs:
because of the immeasurable sixth-order velocity of its carrier wave
it was equally effective at distances of thousands upon thousands of
light--millionia--reaches of space so incomprehensibly vast that the
rays of visible light emitted at the birth of a sun so far away would
reach the point of observation only after that sun had lived through
its entire cycle of life and had disappeared.
"Well, that's about enough of that for you, for a while," Seaton
remarked in a matter-of-fact voice. "A little of that stuff goes a long
ways at first--you have to get used to it."
"I'll say you do! Why--I--it--" Dorothy paused, even her ready tongue
at a loss for words.
"You can't describe it in words--don't try," Seaton advised. "Let's go
outdoors and watch the model grow."
To the awe, if not to the amazement of the observers, the model had
already begun to assume a lenticular pattern. Galaxies, then, really
_were_ arranged in general as were the stars composing them; there
really _were_ universes, and they really _were_ lenticular--the vague
speculations of the hardiest and most exploratory cosmic thinkers were
being confirmed.
For hour after hour the model continued to grow and Seaton's face began
to take on a look of grave concern. At last, however, when the chart
was three fourths done or more, a deep-toned bell clanged out the
signal for which he had been waiting--the news that there was now being
plotted a configuration of Galaxies identical with that portrayed by
the space chart of the Fenachrone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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