There was a scratching sound which irritated me. I tried unsuccessfully to weave it into a couple of dreams before my subconscious gave up. I was lying on my back, eyes closed; I couldn't think where I was. I remembered a frightening dream about being followed, and then as I became aware of pain in my shoulder and head, my eyes snapped open. I was lying on a cot at the side of a small office; the scratching came from the desk where a dapper man in a white uniform sat writing. There was a humming sound and a feeling of motion.
I sat up. At once the man behind the desk looked up, rose, and walked over to me. He drew up a chair and sat down.
"Please don't be alarmed," he said in a clipped British accent. "I am Chief Captain Winter. You need merely assist in giving me some routine information, after which you will be assigned comfortable quarters." He said all this in a smooth lifeless way, as though he'd been through it before. Then he looked directly at me for the first time.
"I must apologize for the callousness with which you were handled; it was not my intention.. . . However," his tone changed, "you must excuse the operative; he was uninformed."
Chief Captain Winter opened a notebook and lolled back in his chair with pencil poised. "Where were you born, Mr. Bayard?"
They must have been through my pockets, I thought; they know my name.
"Who the hell are you?" I said.
The Chief Captain raised an eyebrow. His uniform was immaculate, and brilliantly jeweled decorations sparkled on his chest.
"Of course you are confused at this moment, Mr. Bayard, but everything will be explained to you carefully in due course. I am an Imperial Officer, duly authorized to interrogate subjects under detention." He smiled smoothly. "Now please state your birthplace."
I said nothing. I didn't feel like answering any questions; I had too many of my own to ask first. I couldn't place the fellow's accent; this bothered me because the study of dialects and accents had been a hobby of mine for a long time. He was an Englishman, but I couldn't have said from what part of England. I glanced at the medals. Most of them were strange, but I recognized the scarlet ribbon of the Victoria Cross, with three palms, ornamented with gems. There was something extremely phony about Chief Captain Winter.
"Come along now, old chap," Winter said sharply. "Kindly cooperate. It will save a great deal of unpleasantness."
I looked at him grimly. "I find being chased, grabbed, gassed, stuffed in a cell, and quizzed about my personal life pretty damned unpleasant already, so don't bother trying to keep it all on a high plane. I'm not answering any questions." I reached in my pocket for my passport; it wasn't there.
"Since you've already stolen my passport, you know by now that I'm an American diplomat, and enjoy diplomatic immunity to any form of arrest, detention, interrogation and what have you. So I'm leaving as soon as you return my property, including my shoes."
Winter's face had stiffened up. I could see my act hadn't had much impression on him. He signaled, and two fellows I hadn't seen before moved around into view. They were bigger than he was.
"Mr. Bayard, you must answer my questions; under duress, if necessary. Kindly begin by stating your birthplace."
"You'll find it in my passport," I said. I was looking at the two reinforcements; they were as easy to ignore as a couple of bulldozers in the living room. I decided on a change of tactics. I'd play along in the hope they'd relax a bit, and then make a break for it.
One of the men, at a signal, handed Winter my passport from his desk. He glanced through it, made a number of notes, and passed the booklet back to me.
"Thank you, Mr. Bayard," he said pleasantly. "Now let's get on to particulars. Where did you attend school?"
I tried hard now to give the impression of one eager to please. I regretted my earlier truculence; it made my present pose of cooperativeness a little less plausible. Winter must have been accustomed to the job though, and to subjects who were abject. After a few minutes he waved an arm at the two bouncers, who left the room silently.
Winter had gotten on to the subject of international relations and geopolitics now, and seemed to be fascinated by my commonplace replies. I attempted once or twice to ask why it was necessary to quiz me closely on matters of general information, but was firmly guided back to the answering of questions.
He covered geography and recent history thoroughly with emphasis on the period 1879-1910, and then started in on a biographic list; all I knew about one name after another. Most of them I'd never heard of; a few were minor public figures. He quizzed me in detail on two Italians, Cocini and Maxoni. He could hardly believe I'd never heard of them. He seemed fascinated by many of my replies.
"Niven an actor?" he said incredulously. "Never heard of Crane Talbot?" and when I described Churchill's role in recent affairs, he laughed uproariously.
After forty minutes of this one-sided discussion, a buzzer sounded faintly, and another of the uniformed men entered, placed a good-sized box on the corner of the desk, and left. Winter ignored the interruption.
Another twenty minutes of questions went by. Who was the present monarch (of Anglo-Germany, Winter specified); what was the composition of the royal family, the ages of the children, etc, until I had exhausted my knowledge of the subject. What was the status of the Viceroyalty of India; explain the working of the Dominion arrangements of Australia, North America, Cabotsland. . . I was appalled at the questions; the author of them must have been insane. It was almost impossible to link the garbled references to non-existent political subdivisions and institutions to reality. I answered as matter-of-factly as possible. At least Winter did not seem to be much disturbed by my revision of his distorted version of affairs.
At last Winter rose, moved over to his desk, and motioned me to a chair beside it. As I pulled the chair out, I glanced into the box on the desk. I saw magazines, folded cloth, coins—and the butt of a small automatic protruding from under a copy of the World Almanac. Winter had turned away, reaching into a small cabinet behind the desk. My hand darted out, scooped up the pistol, and dropped it into my pocket as I seated myself.
Winter turned back with a blue glass bottle. "Now let's have a drop and I'll attempt to clear up some of your quite justifiable confusion, Mr. Bayard," he said genially. "What would you like to know?" I ignored the bottle.
"Where am I?" I said.
"In the city of Stockholm, Sweden."
"We seem to be moving; what is this, a moving van with an office in it?"
"This is a vehicle, though not a moving van."
"Why did you pick me up?"
"I'm sorry that I can tell you no more than that you were brought in under specific orders from a very high-ranking officer of the Imperial Service." He looked at me speculatively. "This was most unusual," he added.
"I take it kidnapping inoffensive persons is not in itself unusual."
Winter frowned. "You are the subject of an official operation of Imperial Intelligence. Please rest assured you are not being persecuted."
"What is Imperial Intelligence?"
"Mr. Bayard," Winter said earnestly, leaning forward, "it will be necessary for you to face a number of realizations; the first is that the governments which you are accustomed to regarding as supreme sovereign powers must in fact be considered tributary to the Imperium, the Paramount Government in whose service I am an officer."
"You're a fake," I said.
Winter bristled. "I hold an Imperial Commission as Chief Captain of Intelligence."
"What do you call this vehicle we're in?"
"This is an armed TNL scout based at Stockholm Zero Zero."
"That tells me a lot; what is it, a boat, car, airplane. . . ?"
"None of those, Mr. Bayard."
"All right, I'll be specific; what does it travel on, water, air. . . ?"
Winter hesitated. "Frankly, I don't know."
I saw it was time to try a new angle of attack. "Where are we going?"
"We are presently operating along coordinates zero-zero-zero, zero-zero-six, zero-ninety-two."
"What is our destination? What place?"
"Stockholm Zero Zero, after which you'll probably be transferred to London Zero Zero for further processing."
"What is this Zero business? Do you mean London, England?"
"The London you refer to is London B-I Three."
"What's the difference?"
"London Zero Zero is the capital of the Imperium, comprising the major portion of the civilized world; North Europe, West Hemisphere, Australia, etc."
I changed the subject. "Why did you kidnap me?"
"A routine interrogational arrest, insofar as I know."
"Do you intend to release me?"
"Yes."
"At home?"
"No."
"Where?"
"I can't say; at one of several concentration points."
"One more question," I said, easing the automatic from my pocket and pointing it at the third medal from the left. "Do you know what this is?"
Winter shrank back in his chair. "Yes," he said. "Where the devil did you get that?"
"Keep your hands in sight; better get up and stand over there."
Winter rose and moved over to the spot indicated. I'd never aimed a pistol at a man point-blank before, but I felt no hesitation now.
"Tell me all about it," I said.
"I've answered every question," Winter said nervously.
"And told me nothing." Winter stood staring at me.
I slipped the safety off with a click. "You have five seconds to start," I said. "One. . . Two. . . "
"Very well," Winter said. "No need for all this; I'll try." He hesitated. "You were selected from higher up. We went to a great deal of trouble to get you in particular. As I've explained, that's rather irregular. However," Winter seemed to be warming to his subject, "all sampling in this region has been extremely restricted in the past; you see, your continuum occupies an island, one of a very few isolated lines in a vast blighted region. The entire configuration is abnormal, and an extremely dangerous area in which to maneuver. We lost many good men in the early years before we learned how to handle the problems involved."
"I suppose you know this is all nonsense to me," I said. "What do you mean by sampling?"
"Do you mind if I smoke?" Winter said. I took a long brown cigarette from a box on the desk, lit it, and handed it to him. "Sampling refers to the collection of individuals or artifacts from representative B-I lines," he said, blowing out smoke. "We in Intelligence are engaged now in mapping operations. It's fascinating work, old boy, picking up the trend lines, coordinating findings with theoretical work, developing accurate calibrating devices, instruments, et cetera. We're just beginning to discover the potentialities of working the Net. In order to gather the maximum of information in a short time, we've found it expedient to collect individuals for interrogation. In this way we quickly gain a general picture of the configuration of the Net in various 'directions.' In your case, I was directed under sealed orders to enter the Blight, proceed to Blight-Insular Three, and take over custody of Mr. Brion Bayard, a diplomat representing, of all things, an American Republic." Winter spoke enthusiastically now. As he relaxed, he seemed younger.
"It was quite a feather in my cap, old chap, to be selected to conduct an operation in the Blight, and I've found it fascinating. Always in the past, of course, I've operated at such a distance from the Imperium that little or no analogy existed. But B-I Three! Why it's practically the Imperium, with just enough variation to stir the imagination. Close as the two lines are, there's a desert of Blight around and between them that indicates how frightfully close to the rim we've trodden in times past."
"All right, Winter. I've heard enough," I said. "You're just a harmless nut, maybe. But I'll be going now."
"That's quite impossible," Winter said. "We're in the midst of the Blight."
"What's the Blight?" I asked, making conversation as I looked around the room, trying to pick out the best door to leave by. There were three. I decided on the one no one had come through yet. I moved toward it.
"The Blight is a region of utter desolation, radiation, chaos," Winter was saying. "There are whole ranges of A-lines where the very planet no longer exists, where automatic cameras have recorded nothing but a vast ring of debris in orbit; then there are the cinder-worlds, and here and there dismal groups of cancerous jungles, alive with radiation-poisoned mutation. It's frightful, old chap. You can wave the pistol at me all night, but it will get you nothing. In a few hours we'll arrive at Zero Zero; you may as well relax till then."
I tried the door; it was locked. "Where's the key?" I said.
"There's no key. It will open automatically at Base."
I went to one of the other doors, the one the man with the box had entered through. I pulled it open and glanced out. The humming sound was louder and down a short and narrow corridor I saw what appeared to be a pilot's compartment. A man's back was visible.
"Come on, Winter," I said. "Go ahead of me."
"Don't be a complete ass, old boy," Winter said, looking irritated. He turned toward his desk. I raised the pistol, sighted, and fired. The shot boomed inside the walls of the room, and Winter leaped back from the desk holding a ripped hand. He whirled on me, for the first time looking really scared. "You're insane!" he shouted. "I've told you we're in the midst of the Blight."
I was keeping one eye on the man up front, who was looking over his shoulder while frantically doing something with his other hand.
"You're leaking all over that nice rug," I said. "I'm going to kill you with the next one. Stop this machine."
Winter was pale; he swallowed convulsively. "I swear, Mr. Bayard, that's utterly impossible. I'd rather you'd shoot me. You have no conception of what you're suggesting."
I saw now that I was in the hands of a dangerous lunatic. I believed Winter when he said he'd rather die than stop this bus—or whatever it was. In spite of my threat, I couldn't shoot him in cold blood. I turned and took three steps up the passage and poked the automatic into the small of the back that showed there.
"Cut the switch," I said. The man, who was one of the two who had been standing by when I awoke in the office, continued to twist frantically at a knob on the panel before him. He glanced up at me, but kept on twiddling. I raised the pistol and fired a shot into the instrument panel. The man jumped convulsively, and threw himself forward, protecting the panel with his body.
"Stop, you bloody fool," he shouted. "Let us explain. . . "
"I tried that," I said. "It didn't work. Get out of my way. I'm bringing this wagon to a halt one way or another."
I stood so that I could see both men. Winter half crouched in the doorway, face white. "Are we all right, Doyle?" he called in a strained voice. Doyle eased away from the panel, turned his back to me, and glanced over the instruments. He flipped a toggle, cursed, and turned back to face Winter.
"Communicator dead," he said. "But we're still in operation."
I hesitated now. These two were genuinely terrified of the idea of stopping; they had paid as little attention to me and my noisy gun as one would to a kid with a water pistol. Compared to stopping, a bullet was apparently a trifling irritation.
It was also obvious that this was no moving van. The pilots' compartment had more instruments than an airliner, and no windows. Elaborate ideas began to run through my mind. Space ship? Time machine? What the devil had I gotten into?
"All right, Winter," I said. "Let's call a truce. I'll give you five minutes to give me a satisfactory explanation, prove you're not an escapee from the violent ward, and tell me how you're going to go about setting me down right back where you found me. If you can't or won't cooperate, I'll fill that panel full of holes—including anybody who happens to be standing in front of it."
"Yes," Winter said. "I swear I'll do all I can. Just come away from the control compartment."
"I'll stay right here," I said. "I won't jump the gun unless you give me a reason, like holding your mouth wrong."
Winter was sweating. "This is a scouting machine, operating in the Net. By the Net, I mean the complex of Alternative lines which constitute the matrix of all simultaneous reality. Our drive is the Maxoni-Cocini field generator, which creates a force operating at what one might call a perpendicular to normal entropy. Actually, I know little about the physics of the mechanism; I am not a technician."
I looked at my watch. Winter got the idea. "The Imperium is the government of the Zero Zero A-line in which this discovery was made. The device is an extremely complex one, and there are a thousand ways in which it can cause disaster to its operators if a mistake is made. Judging from the fact that every A-line within thousands of parameters of Zero Zero is a scene of the most fearful carnage, we surmise that our line alone was successful in controlling the force. We conduct our operations in all of that volume of A-space lying outside the Blight, as we term this area of destruction. The Blight itself we ordinarily avoid completely."
Winter wrapped a handkerchief around his bleeding hand as he talked.
"Your line, known as Blight-Insular Three, or B-I Three, is one of two exceptions we know to the general destruction. These two lines lie at some 'distance' from Zero Zero, yours a bit closer than B-I Two. B-I Three was discovered only a month or so ago, and just recently confirmed as a safe line. All this exploratory work in the Blight was done by drone scouts, unmanned.
"Why I was directed to pick you up, I don't know. But believe me when I say that if you succeed in crippling this scout, you'll precipitate us into identity with an A-line which might be nothing more than a ring of radioactive dust around the sun, or a great mass of mutated fungus. We cannot stop now for any reason until we reach a safe area."
I looked at my watch again. "Four minutes," I said. "Prove what you've been telling me."
Winter licked his lips. "Doyle, get the recon photos of this sector, the ones we made on the way in."
Doyle reached across to a compartment under the panel and brought out a large red envelope. He handed it to me. I passed it to Winter.
"Open it," I said. "Let's see what you've got."
Winter fumbled a moment, then slipped a stack of glossy prints out. He handed me the first one. "All these photos were made from precisely the same spatial and temporal coordinates as those occupied by the scout. The only difference is the Web coordinates."
The print showed an array of ragged fragments of rock hanging against a backdrop of foggy grey, with a few bright points gleaming through. I didn't know what it was intended to represent.
He handed me another; it was similar. So was a third, with the added detail that one rock fragment had a smooth side, with tiny lines across it. Winter spoke up. "The scale is not what it appears; that odd bit is a portion of the earth's crust, about twenty miles from the camera; the lines are roads." I stared, fascinated. Beyond the strangely scribed fragment, other jagged pieces ranged away to the limit of sight, and beyond. My imagination reeled at the idea that perhaps Winter was telling me the literal truth.
Winter passed over another shot. This one showed a lumpy black expanse, visible only by the murky gleam of light reflected by the irregularities in the surface in the direction of the moon, which showed as a brilliant disc in the black sky.
The next was half obscured by a mass which loomed across the lens, too close for focus. Beyond, a huge sprawling bulk, shapeless, gross, immense, lay half buried in tangled vines. I stared horrified at the tiny cow-like head which lolled uselessly on the slope of the mountainous creature. Some distance away a distended leg-like appendage projected, the hoof dangling.
"Yes," Winter said. "It's a cow. A mutated cow which no longer has any limitation on its growth. It's a vast tissue culture, absorbing nourishment direct from the vines. They grow all through the mass of flesh. The rudimentary head and occasional limbs are quite useless." I pushed the pictures back at him. I was sick. "I've seen enough," I said. "You've sold me. Let's get out of this." I pushed the pistol into my pocket. I thought of the bullet hole in the panel and shuddered.
Back in the office, I sat down at the desk. Winter took the chair. If he had any gimmicks wired up he couldn't reach them from there. He examined his hand distastefully and tightened the handkerchief. I didn't offer to help. He offered me the blue flask again. This time I took a healthy belt from it.
Winter spoke up again. "It's a very unnerving thing, old chap, to have it shown to you all at once that way, I know. I was actually trying to ease the shock, but you must admit you were insistent."
"I can still shoot the pair of you, and anybody else you've got aboard, if it looks like it will help," I said. "I don't like being shanghaied. I don't know what your bosses have in store for me, but I'll bet I won't like it. So what are you going to do about it?"
"I have to bring you in, or give my life in the attempt," Winter said calmly. "I am an Imperial Officer. Inasmuch as you now realize that you can't leave the vessel until we are clear of the Blight, and in view of the fact that in a few hours automatic controls will bring us into phase on the operations ramp at Stockholm Zero Zero, where an escort will be awaiting your arrival, I can't see what advantage you'd derive from killing me. Therefore, we may as well relax and accept the situation." He smiled pleasantly.
I thought about it. I understood on an intellectual level the general idea of what Winter had been telling me, without even beginning to be able to conceive of it as actual physical fact. I thought about it while Winter went on talking, explaining.
I tried to assemble his fragmentary information into a coherent picture: a vast spider web of lines, each one a complete universe, each minutely different from all the others; somewhere, a line, or world, in which a device had been developed that enabled a man to move across the lines. Well, why not, I thought. With all those lines to work with, everything was bound to happen in one of them; or was it?
"How about all the other A-lines, Winter," I said at the thought, "where this same discovery must have been made, where there was only some unimportant difference. Why aren't you swarming all over each other, bumping into yourself?"
"That's been a big question to our scientists, old chap, and they haven't yet come up with any definitive answers. However, there are a few established points. First, the thing is a fantastically delicate device, as I've explained. The tiniest slip in the initial experimentation, and we'd have ended like some of those other lines you've seen photos of. Apparently the odds were quite fantastically against our escaping the consequences of the discovery; still, we did, and now we know how to control it.
"As to the very close lines, theory now seems to indicate that there is no actual physical separation between lines; those microscopically close to one another actually merge, blend. . . it's difficult to explain. One actually wanders from one to another, at random, you know. In fact, such is the curious nature of infinity, that there seem to be an infinite number of infinitely close lines we're constantly shifting about in. Usually this makes no difference; we don't notice it, any more than we're aware of hopping along from one temporal point to the next as normal entropy progresses."
At my puzzled frown he added, "The lines run both ways, you know; in an infinite number of directions. If we could run straight back along the normal E-line, we'd be traveling into the past. This won't work, for practical reasons involving two bodies occupying the same space, and all that sort of thing. The Maxoni principle enables us to move in a manner which we think of as being at right angles to the normal drift. With it, we can operate through 360 degrees, but always at the same E-level at which we start. Thus, we will arrive at Stockholm Zero Zero at the same moment we departed from B-I Three." Winter laughed. "This detail caused no end of misunderstanding and counter-accusation on the first trials."
"So we're all shifting from one universe to another all the time without knowing it," I said skeptically.
"Not necessarily all of us, not all the time," Winter said. "But emotional stress seems to have the effect of displacing one; of course with the relative positions of two grains of sand, or even of two atoms within a grain of sand being the only difference between two adjacent lines, you'd not be likely to notice; but at times greater slips occur with most individuals. Perhaps you yourself have noticed some tiny discrepancy at one time or another; some article apparently moved or lost; some sudden change in the character of someone you know; false recollections of past events. The universe isn't all as rigid as one might like to believe."
"You're being awfully plausible, Winter," I said. "Let's pretend I accept your story. Now tell me about this vehicle."
"Just a small mobile M C station, mounted on an autopropelled chassis. It can move about on level ground or paved areas, and also in calm water. It enables us to do most of our spatial maneuvering on our own ground, so to speak, and avoid exposing ourselves to the hazards of attempting to conduct ground operations in strange areas."
"Where are the rest of the men in your party," I asked. "There are at least three more of you."
"They're all at their assigned posts," Winter said. "There's another small room containing the drive mechanism forward of the control compartment."
"If the controls are set for an automatic return to your base, why do you need all the technicians on the job?" I asked.
Winter stared. "You don't appreciate the complexity and delicacy of controlling this unit," he said. "Constant attention is required."
"What's this stuff for?" I indicated the box on the desk from which I'd gotten the gun.
Winter looked at it, then said ruefully, "So that's where you acquired the weapon. I knew you'd been searched. Damned careless of Doyle; bloody souvenir hunter! I told him to submit everything to me for approval before we returned, so I guess it's my fault." He touched his aching hand tenderly.
"Don't feel too bad about it; I'm just a clever guy," I said. "However, I'm not very brave. As a matter of fact I'm scared to death of what's in store for me when we arrive at our destination."
"You'll be well treated, Mr. Bayard," Winter assured me. I let that one pass. Maybe when we arrived, I could come out shooting, make an escape. . . That line of thought didn't seem very encouraging either. What would I do next, loose in this Imperium of Winter's? What I needed was a return ticket home. I found myself thinking of it as B-I Three, and realized I was beginning to accept Winter's story. I took another drink from the blue bottle.
Except for the hum, it was quiet in the room. The old man up front stayed hunched over his instruments. Winter shifted in his chair, cleared his throat, and said nothing. There was an odd sensation of motion, in spite of the fact that the room was steady.
"Why don't we explode when we pass through one of those empty-space lines, or burn in the hot ones," I asked suddenly. "Suppose we found ourselves peeking out from inside one of those hunks of rock you were photographing?"
"We don't linger about long enough, old boy," Winter said. "We remain in any one line for no finite length of time, therefore there's no time for us to react physically to our surroundings."
"How can you take pictures, and use communicators?"
"The camera remains inside the field. The photo is actually a composite exposure of all the lines we cross during the instant of the exposure. The lines differ hardly at all, of course, and the prints are quite clear. Light, of course, is a condition, not an event. Our communicators employ a sort of grating which spreads the transmission."
"I don't get it," I said. I was feeling confused, but a little more at ease. The blue bottle was all right. I had another sample.
"I'm making a special study of what I term 'A-entropy'," Winter said. "I've taken several rather fascinating sequences using a cine-camera, which seem to indicate that there are other 'streams of consciousness' than those with which we're familiar, those we sense as our own personalities. If one focuses a camera on an individual subject, the progressive changes in the subject, all of course occurring at the same instant of normal time, seem to be almost as purposeful as our progressive spatial changes as we proceed along an E-line." Winter warmed to his subject, ignoring my lack of response.
"Now consider a normal cine sequence. Each frame shows the subject in a slightly different position, spatially and temporally. As we proceed along from one frame to the next, we see the action develop. The man walks, the wave breaks, the horse gallops, etc. Well, the same sort of thing can be seen in my films. I've one fascinating sequence. Here, let me show you," he said.
I leaned forward with the gun in my hand and watched Winter intently as he rose and pulled a small projector from a wall cabinet. He placed it on a table, made a few adjustments, and a scene flashed clearly on the white wall opposite me. A man stood alone in a field.
Winter continued with his running commentary.
"We were progressing directly away from Base; notice the increasing alienness of the scene. . . "
The man changed, the scene behind him changed, drifting and oddly flowing, though he stood unmoving. The sun was visible in the sky. A leaf falling through the air hung, suspended. The man held a hoe, with which he was in the act of rooting out a small green weed. On the screen, the weed grew visibly, putting out leaves. The leaves grew larger, became splotched with red. The man seemed to shrink back, without moving his feet. The hoe shortened, the metal twisting and writhing into a new shape. The man's arms grew shorter, thicker, his back more stooped.
All around, the other plants drew back, apparently drifting through the soil, some fading down to nothing, others gathering together into gnarled clumps. The weed burgeoned enormously. Fleshy leaves waved out toward the man, now hardly a man. Horny armor spread like a carapace across his shoulders, and great clamp-like hands gripped a glittering scythe. Now teeth were appearing along the edge of each leaf, as the scythe merged with their fat stems. The roots of the plant twisted into view above the ground, entailing the legs of the no longer human creature attacking it. He too gained height now, the head enlarging to accommodate great jaws.
All around, the field lay barren, the remaining plants grouped in tight impregnable mounds here and there. The figure of the monstrous animal now reared high above the plant, locked in its leafy embrace. The scythe, buried among the stems, twisted, and tendrils withered and leaves wilted back to shriveled brown husks as new shoots appeared, raw and pink. Plant teeth grated on flaring armor. It was a grim and silent battle, waged without movement under a changeless sky.
Now the plant shrank back, blackening, drooping. The sharp steel blade was visible once more; the armor plates melted gradually back into the shoulders, as the victorious creature gave up his monstrous defensive form. The great jaws dwindled, the hands and legs changed. In the distance, the mounds opened and plants flowed out across the soil. Another minute and the man, or almost a man if you overlooked the green skin and short horns, stood with upraised hoe before a small crimson weed.
The projector blinked off.
"What did you think of that, old chap?" Winter said.
"A nightmare," I said.
"There's a sequence of cause and effect, of attack and defense, in a completely different fashion from anything we know of course, but quite obvious, I think."
"I think I'd better lay off that little old blue bottle," I said. But I didn't feel as flippant as I sounded. I was shaken all the way through, and for the first time I really believed in what was happening.
"The last of that sequence was made at a tremendous distance from Zero Zero," Winter said. "The frames were actually shot at a rate of one per second of subjective time. No way of telling, of course, just what the normal rate of progression, if any, might be, along that line; what appeared to us to be a brief battle might have been a life-long struggle, or even an age of evolution. The most remote lines we saw, there at the end, represent a divergence point nearly a million years in the past."
"Winter," I said, "this is all extremely interesting, but I'd enjoy it a lot more if I had some idea of what you people have in mind for me. I get the impression that you have small regard for a man's comfort. I think you might be planning to use me in some sort of colorful experiment, and then throw me away; toss me out into one of those cosmic junk-heaps you showed me. And that stuff in the blue bottle isn't quite soothing enough to drive the idea out of my mind."
"Great heavens, old boy!" Winter sat bolt upright. "Nothing of that sort, I can assure you. Why, we're not blasted barbarians! Since you are an object of official interest of the Imperium, you can be assured of humane and honorable treatment."
"I didn't like what you said about 'concentration points' a while back. That sounds like jail to me."
"Not at all," Winter expostulated. "There are a vast number of very pleasant A-lines well outside the Blight which are either completely uninhabited, or are occupied by backward or underdeveloped peoples. One can well nigh select the technological and cultural level in which one would like to live. All interrogation subjects are most scrupulously provided for; they're supplied with everything necessary to live in comfort for the remainder of their normal lives."
"Marooned on a desert island, or parked in a native village? That doesn't sound too jolly to me," I said. "I'd rather be at home."
Winter smiled speculatively. "What would you say to being set up with a fortune in gold, and placed in a society closely resembling that of, say, England in the 17th Century; with the added advantage that you'd have electricity, plenty of modern literature, supplies for a lifetime, whatever you wish. You must remember that we have the resources of all the universe to draw upon."
"I'd like it better if I had a little more choice," I said. It was all very cozy here in this room at the moment, but I was still the victim of a rather crude kidnapping, and I couldn't think of anything practical I could do about it at the moment.
"Suppose we keep right on going, once we're clear of the Blight," I said. "That reception committee wouldn't be waiting then. You could run this buggy back to B-I Three. I could force you."
"See here, Bayard," Winter said impatiently. "You have a gun; very well, shoot me; shoot all of us. What would that gain you? The operation of this machine requires a very high technical skill. The controls are set for automatic return to the starting point. It is absolutely against Imperium policy to return a subject to the line from which he was taken. The only thing for you to do is cooperate with us, and you have my assurance as an Imperial officer that you will be treated honorably."
I looked at the gun. "According to the movies," I said, "the fellow with the gun always gets his own way. But you don't seem to care whether I shoot you or not."
Winter smiled. "Aside from the fact that you've had quite a few draughts from my brandy flask and probably couldn't hit the wall with that weapon you're holding, I assure you—"
"You're always assuring me," I said. I tossed the pistol onto the desk. I put my feet up on the polished top, and leaned back in the chair. "Wake me up when we get there. I'll want to fix my face."
Winter laughed. "Now you're being reasonable, old boy. It would be damned embarrassing for me to have to warn the personnel at base that you were waving a pistol about."