Amazing Stories, May 1946.
Crouched on the bunk in the back of the prison cell, Dick Vey looked like a forlorn, frightened puppy. When the guard opened the grilled door and let me in, there was something frantically desperate in the way he grabbed at my hand.
“Jim! I was afraid you wouldn’t get my message. When I—when they brought me here, I naturally thought of you. You’ve got to get me out of here, Jim.”
“That’s what lawyers are for, Dick,” I answered. There was a blotch of a bruise over his right eye, his face was covered with stubble, and his cheeks were sunken. Looking at him, you would never guess he was one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of mathematical physicists who have followed in the footsteps of Eddington, Dirac, Minkowski, and others, that he was—or had been—the personally selected star assistant of Dr. Samuel Benson, whose mathematical development of the unified field theory had set the scientific world buzzing. He didn’t look like the mathematical wizard I had known in college. He looked a drunken stumble-bum who has been caught in a police dragnet.
“You’ve got to get me out of here, Jim. You’ve got to get me out of here right away. Tonight!”
“Um. Tomorrow maybe, within a week for sure.”
“Tomorrow is too late. It’s got to be by tonight.”
“I’ll do what I can. But what’s the big hurry, if I may ask?”
“I’ve got to find Dr. Benson!”
“Uh!” I gasped. His effrontery startled even me. “Damn it, Dick, don’t you realize you’re in here because neither the police—nor anybody else—can find Benson, that you’re accused of abducting him? And since he stacks up right behind Einstein and the district attorney is getting plenty of publicity out of holding you in the jug on a charge of abducting Benson, springing you out of this can—so you can find him—is going to take some doing!”
“Above him, Jim.”
“What?”
“Benson stacks up above Einstein. His unified field theory takes up where Einstein stopped—”
I groaned. “Skip it, Dick, skip it. I know you think Benson is some kind of a god, but I don’t want to start any arguments with you on the relative merits of Benson and Einstein. You mathematicians can fight that out. My job is to get you out of jail. Tell me your side of the story. All I know is what I’ve read in the newspapers. What actually happened the night Benson vanished?”
A worried, harried, fretful look crossed his face. The expression in his eyes changed. He seemed to be looking at something far away.
“I don’t know,” he said at last.
“You mean you don’t know what happened to Benson?”
“That’s it. I don’t know, and I’m afraid to guess.”
The expression on his face was odd, a mixing of terrible fear and of terrible longing. His face was the face of a kneeling priest gazing upward at the crucifix. It was the face of a man feeling the noose of the hangman knot around his neck seconds before the trapdoor of the gallows drops from beneath his feet. A mixed expression, fear and hope, terror and longing. It was the strangest, oddest, most incredible expression I have ever seen on the face of any man. He began to speak.
“We were working on what we called the bridge of life,” he said and his voice was the voice that goes through dreams. “We have been working on this development for almost three years—”
“Bridge of life?” I interrupted.
“That’s what we call it,” he answered. “Of course the words don’t mean anything, really. We could have called the investigation Assurbanapal and heliotropis and said as much, but we sort of liked the words ‘bridge of life’ and we liked to think of ourselves as exploring this bridge. We could see the bridge all right; we know it exists. But we never could see the two shores it connects. You know, a bridge over a river connects the two banks of the river with each other, so people can get from one side to the other without swimming. We’ve been able to see the bridge of life all right and we know that it exists but we have never been able to see the two shores it connects—”
He sounded fretful and impatient but his voice was still a voice that goes in dreams.
“If you look at life on Earth, Jim,” he continued, “you begin to wonder about the purpose back of it. Why should life be? Why should the carbon atom have the peculiar ability of building up into complex molecules, into the organic compounds that are alive? Everywhere you look you see different forms of living creatures—elephants and ants—ostriches and gnats—whales and sunfish—birds and turtles—monkeys and men—hundreds of thousands of different types of creatures, billions of different individuals crowding the planet, all of them alike in one characteristic—they are alive! Somewhere inside of each and every one of them, inside the elephant and the ant, the man and the monkey, there is a magic spark, a vital glow—life!”
There was a glow on his face now, a magic glow.
“You get the impression that life is perhaps alien to this Earth, that is, was marooned here long, long ago. Ever since it was marooned it has been building a bridge across both time and space from here to somewhere else. The building blocks are our bodies—the insect and the elephant, the monkeys and men—with the magic glow being passed down the generations from parents to children. Through the medium of these million and one individuals, these thousands of different species, life is building a bridge across eternity. The source from which life sprang I can’t begin to guess. What is at the far end of the bridge? I haven’t the haziest idea. All I know is that I can see all around me a multitude of different life forms all working furiously at a single task—building a bridge for life. To the investigation of this bridge Dr. Benson and I were devoting our lives.”
His voice ran into silence. Little cold winds blew up my back. Madman or genius? Intellectual giant a thousand years ahead of his time? Or fool playing with words? I didn’t know the answer but I knew the questions he was asking were as old as the human race. What is the purpose of life. The men who carved the Sphinx and set it in the valley of the Nile as an eternal question mark for all coming ages were really asking that same question. The prophets of the old testament “—The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork—” were only using the words at their command to express one fundamental idea—the majesty and the glory and the mystery of creation, were only asking, “What am I, that I can see these things but can’t understand them?” What is the purpose of life? When they answer that question, I want to be around. It’s the sixty-four dollar question all right and I want to hear the answer.
“The mathematics and related electronic mechanics were what Dr. Benson and I were investigating when he disappeared,” he ended. “We were exploring—or were trying to explore—the bridge.”
There was magic in his words and magic in the thinking that was back of the words. Unfortunately the district attorney was not the type to be impressed by magic. If I was going to get Dick Vey out of this jail, I would have to use hard, cold legal logic—or political pressure.
I changed the subject.
“All I know about this case is what I’ve read in the papers. They arrested you this morning. Benson must have disappeared last night. You are charged with abducting, kidnapping—possibly even with killing him. Tell me exactly what happened.”
* * * *
He told me. He and Benson had been working in the latter’s laboratory, a large building of reinforced concrete situated down at the edge of the factory district. It was late at night. Vey had gone from the lab to a small supply building on the same lot to obtain—and this seemed odd—a compact but very powerful walkie-talkie radio set stored there. Benson had sent him for the radio equipment. He had left the scientist in the lab. When he returned, Benson was gone. There were only two keys to the expensive and intricate lock on the door. He had one key and Benson had had the other.
He had searched the laboratory without finding the scientist, had searched the building, had gone outside and searched the lot. He had run around the neighborhood calling Benson’s name. Finally he had called the police. The cops had listened to his story. Then they had tossed him into the jug on the suspected-of-kidnapping charge.
Justice in this great democracy is sometimes slightly cockeyed.
I was indignant. The police had no evidence on which to hold Vey. There was no real evidence he had kidnapped Benson, and most important of all, there was no motive for such an act. On the contrary, Vey had worshipped the scientist.
“They can’t do that to you, Dick. I’ll see the DA immediately.”
His face gleamed. “Good, Jim. But remember it’s got to be quick. Every hour is important now.”
* * * *
John Bockner was the district attorney. He was in his office. “Sure, Rush, I’ll release him—on proper bond.”
“Good. How big a bond do you want?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“What?”
Bockner was fat, addicted to expensive suits, and expansive smiles. He leaned back in his swivel chair and gave me the benefit of one of those smiles. “Rush, I like you. You’re a fine fellow and an ornament to the bar. But if you want Vey released on bond, the figure is fifty thousand dollars.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I heatedly protested. “You can’t hold Vey on a bond like that. You don’t have any proof that he abducted Benson. Most of all, there is no possible motive for such an act.
Bockner grinned. “No motive, eh?”
“No.”
“No motive at all—except three life insurance policies naming Vey as beneficiary totalling sixty thousand dollars. No motive except Benson’s will naming Vey as sole heir to over a quarter of a million dollars. No, we don’t have any motive, Rush, except a quarter of a million dollars that Vey will gain if Benson dies or disappears. Under the circumstances, Rush—because you’re a good fellow and because I like you—I think I’m being very generous in not demanding more than fifty thousand dollars as a bond before releasing Vey. Very generous indeed.”
“A quarter of a million— Uh! Bockner, I didn’t know about this, but I can’t see that it alters the case any.”
He shook his head. “I’d help you if I could, but my duty to the public demands that I keep Vey restrained. Sorry, Rush, but there’s nothing I can do.”
* * * *
Back in the cell, I told Dick Vey the bad news.
“I’ve got to get out, Jim,” he repeated. “I’ve got to!”
“It’ll take two or three days to raise a bond of that size,” I told him.
“But I can’t wait two or three days!” he blazed. “I’ve got to get out of here tonight!”
“Why tonight?”
He shut up tight as a clam at the question. He was holding something back; he knew more than he was telling.
“I’ll do the best I can to get you out tomorrow,” I promised as I left.
* * * *
It turned out, my best wasn’t good enough. When the first editions of the morning papers hit the streets at nine o’clock that night, the headlines read:
SUSPECTED KIDNAPPER ESCAPES
Richard Vey, suspected of kidnapping the eminent scientist Samuel Benson, escaped from the city jail in a daring and successful try for freedom at eight o’clock last night. Vey pretended illness and succeeded in overpowering the guard who entered the cell to help him. Donning the guard’s clothes, he made a clean escape. Police are already on his trail and the district attorney promises an early arrest.
I groaned. If the darned fool had only waited, I could have scraped up a bond for him. I could have made a deal with Bockner or brought enough political pressure to bear to make him change his mind. It might have taken two or three days, but two or three days in jail wouldn’t have killed Dick. Or would it? He had said he couldn’t wait.
Why was he in such a hurry? What was the pressure that necessitated such desperate speed? Were Benson and Vey hiding something in that laboratory? What was the bridge of life they were investigating? If there was an answer to any of these questions, it would be found in their laboratory. I got in my car.
* * * *
From the street as I drove slowly past, the laboratory was a large concrete building sitting dark and silent on the back side of the large lot it occupied. The laboratory looked like a modernistic factory building—a small factory at that. There was nothing mysterious about it, or about the neighborhood. Two shabby dilapidated brownstone houses sat across the street. A garage had been built between them. Two blocks away was a small factory that specialized in the manufacture of barn paint. Nothing mysterious here. About 1880, the neighborhood had been a prosperous residential section. The brownstone houses had been built then. Later the city had grown. Year by year the factories had moved into the section, following the pattern set in dozens of American cities.
There was no mystery in the outside appearance of the laboratory or in the neighborhood. If there was a mystery here, it was in the minds of two men— Samuel Benson and Richard Vey. But, for that matter, what greater mystery exists than the human mind, than that strange, incredibly odd, beautiful and grotesque, world-spanning and ditch-digging chunk of tortuous gray matter, the human mind? It is, I think the greatest mystery on Earth, probably the greatest mystery in the universe. What is mind, this chemical and electronic balance, this gray pulp that each man carried in his skull? Coming out of muck and slime, the product of blind forces locked in cruel battle, it looks beyond the stars, seeking—always seeking—something.
Just as Vey sought something, keeping the mystery of what he sought to himself. There was mystery in this modernistic laboratory all right, mystery in this prosaic, down-at-the-heels neighborhood, the mystery hidden in Vey’s mind. Possibly the greatest mystery ever explored in all the history of the world, unless the hints of certain mystics indicate they too had partly explored this mystery and know more than they tell.
The secret of the mystery that motivated Vey—and had motivated Benson—might lie in that dark laboratory. And might not. For probably only God and Richard Vey knew all the secrets hidden in there.
I parked my car on a dark side street two blocks away and walked back.
Getting into the lab took some doing. Benson hadn’t intended to make entry easy for amateur burglars. Fortunately the coal supply had recently been replenished and some careless coalman had left the chute open. A great many of my friends would probably have been surprised to see a dignified attorney compounding a possible illegal entry charge by sliding down a coal chute, but both dignity and the law could go to hell for all of me. I wanted to see what was inside that lab.
As I reached the top step of the basement stairs leading up into the laboratory, the door in front of me was snatched open.
“Hands up!” a voice barked.
The beam of the flashlight that covered me revealed the muzzle of a .45 caliber automatic pistol pointed straight at my stomach. I jerked my hands into the air.
A split second later the muzzle was hastily turned aside and Dick Vey was apologizing.
“Jim Rush! I didn’t know it was you. When the warning system revealed there was an intruder in the basement, I got a gun. I didn’t know it was you!”
“Dick, you blasted fool, why in the hell did you break out—” I got that far before stopping. There was no point in giving him hell for adding the very real charge of jail breaking to the charge of abduction the district attorney already had against him. Anyhow he wouldn’t have listened. There was burning excitement in his eyes.
“You’re just in time,” he whispered.
“In time for what?”
“Come on into the lab and I’ll show you.”
* * * *
Inside the lab the lights were burning, but they had been carefully shielded so that no beam escaped upwards to shine through the skylight. The shaded lamps revealed the most bewildering collection of mechanical and electrical equipment I have ever seen. There was something of everything in this lab. Gigantic, water-cooled vacuum tubes designed to produce the radio frequency output for a powerful radio transmitter, a chemist’s balance delicate enough to weigh a pencil mark on a piece of paper. A monstrous calculating machine big enough to handle the financial transactions of every bank on Earth and lying beside it on a table a stub pencil and dozens of sheets of scribbled paper. A powerful motor generator set and several large freakish constructions that looked like radio transmitters except that they weren’t quite right for normal transmitters. The antennae were strangely shaped and of no design ever dreamed up by any radio engineer.
Oddest of all was the impression that the equipment was grouped into units and that each unit represented an experiment that had somehow failed. Kipling wrote a story about a peasant boy, a cowherd in India, who went crazy and started out to make a perfect image of God. His friends found the statues he had made, each a little better than the preceding one but each still falling short of the dream in his mind. “Thus gods are made.” There were no statues in this laboratory and no one had been trying to make a perfect image of God but something about these groups of equipment made me think of Kipling’s story. With this thought, the prickly feet of fear crawled up my spine.
At the far end of the large room was another experiment, a bulky complicated arrangement of electrical apparatus that looked like a radio transmitter that had succeeded in doing what the other transmitters in the room had tried to do and failed—go crazy. Looking at it, I got the impression that this was an experiment that had not failed.
* * * *
“This—this is where I last saw Dr. Benson,” Vey said, pointing to the electrical apparatus.
“Yes.”
“He was here tinkering with the controls on this generator,” he continued, pointing to a large black panel covered with meters and switches.
“Um. What do you think happened?”
Blazing excitement lighted his face. He didn’t answer my question. Instead he asked me a question. “Do you remember I told you Dr. Benson had sent me out to the supply shack to get an extra walkie-talkie set we had out there?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, the important thing is that the set I went after was an extra one. We already had one here in the lab.”
“What difference does that make?”
“The set we had here in the lab is gone.”
“Gone—” I thought about that, turning the idea over in my mind, seeking the reason back of it. There was a reason back of it, somewhere. The blazing look on Dick’s face told me this much.
“Maybe the cops took it,” I suggested.
“No. When I returned to the lab and found Dr. Benson was gone, I also noticed the walkie-talkie set was gone too.”
“Hm. Benson disappears. A walkie-talkie also disappears. Do you think he took it with him?”
“That’s exactly what I think, Jim!” Dick triumphantly answered.
To me this sounded like it was heavy on the silly side, but Dick seemed to think it was very important. There was a walkie-talkie set lying on the workbench. He picked it up. “And I think I can get in touch with him.”
“You think you can get in touch with him through the walkie-talkie he took with him?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know where he is?”
“No. That is one thing I don’t know.”
The preposterousness of this idea filtered slowly into my mind. Dick Vey grinned shyly, yearningly. Still holding the walkie-talkie, he turned to the bulky arrangement of apparatus that had given me the impression it was an experiment that had not failed, snapped switches. The motor generator howled. Heater filaments in two giant transmitting tubes began to glow dull red. A large transformer hummed as it built up high potential current for the plates of the tubes. The air crackled with electric tension. Strong electric currents were whipping back and forth inside that equipment, reversing themselves millions of times per second and in the process setting up no telling what kind of strains in the surrounding area.
“This is generating radiations of rather high frequency,” Dick said. “The wave form is something new, something we just worked out within the last few days. That’s the real secret—the wave form.”
“Um. What’s it for?”
He didn’t answer. He was busy watching a small screen that was beginning to glow with vague splotches of light. The moving light splotches twisted like the flashes on a television screen that is slightly out of focus, finally tracing out the single symbol—the letter X.
“We’ll try Condition X first,” Dick grunted. “We’ll probably have to go up to Condition Z to make contact, but we’ll try X and Y first. And let me warn you, Jim, not to approach this equipment while Condition X or Y is showing in the screen. Under no circumstances are you to go near it when Condition Z is on. In fact, I’m not certain it’s even safe to look at it when Condition Z is up. Condition Z represents about the ultimate in warping effect, and looking at the equipment seems to hurt the eyes when the strain is on. If you have to look at it, take little sneaking quick glances out of the corners of your eyes. But don’t look at it straight because it somehow seems to twist hell out of your eyeballs.”
I didn’t say anything, but again I was aware of fear creeping through my mind.
Dick snapped the switch on the walkie-talkie. “Calling Dr. Benson,” he spoke into the transmitter. “Calling Dr. Benson. Answer please. Over.”
Pushing the receiver hard against his ear, he waited for an answer.
The shadow of fear darkened in my mind. I watched him closely, trying to put out of my thoughts what was happening right here before my eyes. Dick Vey was calling the missing scientist on a walkie-talkie and calling in a way which indicated he expected an answer.
I thought of madmen then, of the strange disordered fancies that go through the human mind. And I knew I was either witnessing the actions of a madman or I was suddenly on the verge of the biggest discovery ever made in the history of the human race. A bigger discovery than fire, a bigger discovery than the wheel. I thought of the true and the false and how true things fade into false things and false facts sometimes turn out to be true. I thought of how tomorrow is unreal today yet by some miracle just a little beyond the comprehension of the human mind, the unreal tomorrow becomes the real today. What is real and what is unreal? What was in Pilate’s mind when he asked, “What is truth?”
“Calling Dr. Benson. This is Richard Vey calling Dr. Benson. Come in, please. Over.”
Matter of fact, nothing to get excited about, commonplace. Only Dick Vey was excited, tremendously so. All his effort to act calm was not good enough to hide the tremendous tension he was feeling.
“Richard Vey calling Dr. Benson— Over—”
Damn it, Benson was missing. Maybe dead for all I knew. And Vey was trying to contact him by radio!
* * * *
For fifteen minutes Dick Vey continued calling. There was no answer. Little lines crept into his unshaven face. Finally he laid the transmitter on the work bench.
“We’ll have to step up the power and go into Condition Y,” he muttered, snapping switches.
The hum of the transformer increased. The “X” on the screen dissolved into a flicker of light. A new letter began to form.
I had no idea of what he was doing. I could see no connection between the bulky assembly of apparatus that formed Condition X and the walkie-talkie set, but he seemed to think both pieces of equipment had to be in operation at the same time.
The generator was a bulky assembly of instruments, an eight-foot switch and meter panel flanked on the left by the motor generator and the transformer. The two giant transmitting tubes were behind the panel. Surrounding them was an assembly of strangely shaped coils and condensers.
Little flickers of movement seemed to flow over the equipment. They looked like distortions caused by rising currents of hot air. My eyes began to hurt. A “Y” slowly formed on the screen.
“Condition Y is unstable,” Dick said. “It may change into Condition X and once in a while it slips over into Condition Z.” He sounded worried.
The pain in my eyes moved to the back of my head. The “Y” formed solidly on the screen.
The feeling of electric tension in the air intensified. I could smell ozone. Dick, glancing at the screen out of the corner of his eyes, picked up the walkie-talkie again.
“Dick Vey calling Dr. Benson. Come in, please.”
“Dick— Dick— Is this you? I’ve been trying to contact you,” a whisper floated from the walkie-talkie.
Dick Vey went crazy.
“Dr. Benson, is this you?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ve actually made contact?”
“Yes.”
“And you—you’ve—the bridge—what happened?”
“I found the—”
Crash!
Thunder roared in the laboratory. Bang! Crash! Smash!
Outside in the night a bull voice roared.
“Knock that door in, boys. Get in there before he makes a getaway.”
Smash!
The front door splintered inward. A flood of cops and plainclothes detectives poured into the room. Right behind them was Bockner, the district attorney, urging them onward. Bockner was looking extremely pleased with himself. Behind him were the legmen from the newspapers. Flash bulbs began to pop.
“Stop it!” Dick Vey screamed, “You fools! Get out of here!”
“Take him, boys,” Bockner ordered.
Vey grabbed for his gun. A flood of blue poured over him. The pistol flew from his hand. A blackjack smashed against his jaw. Dazed, he went down. Handcuffs snicked around his wrists.
He had dropped the walkie-talkie on the floor when the cops burst in. It lay on the floor, sputtering static.
Bockner looked me over. “You here, Rush?” There was a triumphant gleam on his face. Visions of the mornings papers were already in his mind, with his picture on the front pages, the captions reading, “District Attorney Leads Raid.”
“What do you have to say for yourself and your client now?”
He had me. What could I say? All I could do was shrug. “I’ll say it in court. I admit you’ve got a jail-breaking charge against Vey, but it won’t amount to much when I prove conclusively that he was the victim of false arrest.”
“False arrest, you say?” He chuckled.
“Certainly, I say it. What else are you going to call it? And you are going to look mighty funny when you accuse Vey of kidnapping Benson and I produce the missing scientist in court.”
Vey had been talking to Benson on the radio. If he could talk to the missing physicist, we could produce him in court. He couldn’t be far away. Bockner’s case would go out the window and his face would be red clear down to his navel.
Bockner gave me the full benefit of his expansive smile. “Produce Benson in court, you say?”
“That’s right.”
“Ah?”
“Ah, what?”
“That’s going to be a little difficult, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Not too difficult.”
“Hm. That’s your idea, naturally. Personally I think it will be damned difficult in view of— Bring it in, boys,” he yelled to the men at the door.
Two men, carrying a stretcher, entered. A blanket that concealed some long bulky object was thrown over the stretcher. Bockner lifted the blanket.
“—In view of this!” he said.
There was a corpse on the stretcher. The silence that fell was broken only by the throbbing hum of the transformer and the increasing rattle of static from the walkie-talkie on the floor.
I looked at the dead man and didn’t recognize him. The silence held. It was broken by Dick Vey climbing unsteadily to his feet. He took one look at the dead man and began to scream. His voice was a raspy metallic scratch that dug into my heart. He dropped on his knees besides the stretcher.
“Dr. Benson,” he whispered. “Dr. Benson…oh—”
“Benson!” I gasped.
Bockner nodded. “We found his body less than an hour ago. And when the man I had posted watching this joint reported that Vey was here, we brought the body along—to confront Vey with it.”
Triumph rolled in his voice. He was the law-dog who has trailed the murderer to his lair and this was his moment of triumph. The room was silent. Bending over the dead scientist, Vey was fighting to keep from crying. Disordered sentences, broken words, came from his lips. He sounded whipped, broken, beaten, all life gone out of him. My fingers dug into his shoulder.
“Vey!”
He didn’t hear me.
I shook him and I wasn’t gentle.
“Vey!”
He looked up. “Jim,” he whispered. “This—this is Dr. Benson.” Shock was in his voice, shock beyond the telling. The blood had drained away from his skin, leaving it blotched and gray. “This—this is Dr. Benson.”
“So I understand,” I said.
The tone of my voice stung him. “You—”
“This is Dr. Benson,” I pointed to the corpse. “What I want to know is—who were you talking to on the walkie-talkie?”
“Uh—uh—”
I turned to Bockner. “How long has this man been dead?”
“I haven’t had the report of the medical examiner yet, but I should say at least twenty-four hours. The body is already stiff with rigor mortis.”
Dead twenty-four hours.
“Who were you talking to, Vey?”
Uncomprehendingly he stared at me. The police sensed the tenseness of the moment. They didn’t know what had been going on but they must have guessed.
Vey didn’t answer. The hum of the transformer grew louder and the rattle of static increased in the walkie-talkie. I waited. Vey was silent. His eyes were blank terrible things.
I shrugged, turned to the watching Bockner. “It looks like I’ll have to plead insanity. There is more in this than I even begin to understand, but I don’t see any other answer.”
“I do,” he snapped. “You can never make a plea of insanity stand up. It was murder plain and simple, and the motive was Benson’s money—”
“No!” a single hard syllable of protest came from Vey. “No! No! NO!” He leaped to his feet, began to scream the words.
“Bring him along, boys,” Bockner said.
“No,” a tinny whisper rasped through the room.
“Who said that?” Bockner snapped.
There was no answer.
“Condition Z—Condition Z—Dick, the bridge is open. The right side of the generator. It opens there, opens when the current and the wave form are exactly right, opens for only a few seconds. All you have to do is go through it—”
The whisper came from the walkie-talkie on the floor.
It was the same whisper we had heard before.
Vey heard it. His eyes jerked toward the generator. A scream ripped from his lips, A cop grabbed at him. He ducked his head and butted the cop in the stomach.
“Oof!” the cop grunted.
The screen had changed. It was dancing with myriads of flickering lights. Like an electric sign that has gone crazy, the lights flickered and danced on the screen. They formed a crazy, out-of-proportion symbol—the letter Z.
Dick had said that Condition Y was unstable, that it might change into X or into Z.
It had changed into Z.
On the right side of the generator, jutting out from it, was a flickering current of electric flame. My eyeballs turned in their sockets as I looked at it, and a jolt of pain shot through my head. I jerked my gaze away. The lights in the lab dimmed as the overloaded transformer jerked current from the mains.
“Get him!” Bockner screamed.
Vey was fighting like a fool. He slugged one cop with his manacled fists, side-stepped another, dived toward the curtain of flickering electric flame.
Bang!
Somebody shot at him.
Vey hit the flame.
I had expected him to burn. There was no suggestion of burning. His movement slowed down. He was held in that flame for a few seconds, like a moth caught in a candle. Then, like smoke before the rising wind, he began to vanish, moving in a direction that hurt the eyes to follow.
His eyes—his eyes. There was no pain in them, no hurt. All the agony of a few minutes before was gone. He looked like a man who is going home—home after long, long years of wandering in forlorn, unfriendly land, “home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill.” He looked back at me. “Goodbye, Jim… This…this is what we were seeking… Goodbye…”
His whisper died in vast distances.
The strain of watching, of staring into the electric curtain that opened into some dimensional interspace, tore at my eyeballs. The grin on Dick Vey’s face widened, was gone. Like a puff of smoke before the rising wind, he vanished.
* * * *
Bockner threw a fit. He shouted commands to his men to surround the building to search the laboratory. Fiercely I told him to shut up, pointed to the walkie-talkie lying on the floor. Words were coming from it. Laughing words.
“Dick! Dick, my boy—”
And the answer. “Dr. Benson—Dr. Benson—”
The words sounded like two friends meeting each other after long wanderings. They came from our walkie-talkie, still turned on. Somewhere, across the bridge of life, another walkie-talkie was still turned on, too!
Bockner’s face whitened. “Ghosts!” he whispered. “My God—”
“Dick! I’m so glad to see you, to know you are here—”
Words whispering across space. They went suddenly into silence. Smoke puffed from the transformer as the overload burned off the insulation. It shorted out. The curtain of electric flame vanished. Condition Z collapsed. The laboratory seemed to shake itself, then settled back on its foundations. The screen went blank.
* * * *
The next morning they found Dick Vey’s body in the same spot where they had found the body of Dr. Benson. I can offer no explanation for the two bodies except that they, being of the Earth, were returned to their proper resting place. But the something that lived in the body—the soul, the higher function of the mind, whatever it is—I wonder where it went? Out to the stars and to the worlds beyond the stars?
The bridge of life! Is it the destiny of the human race to build a bridge of life from earth to lands that lie beyond the stars? Were Samuel Benson and Dick Vey the first two human to cross that bridge?