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CHAPTER ONE

THE PROBABILITY MACHINE

With the gentleness of a bird alighting on a branch, the multi-ton mass of the spaceship Ultra came to rest upon a barren world—one world in countless thousands strewn throughout the complex star system of the Milky Way Galaxy. A world so far from Earth, the distance would be beyond imagination.

The throb of the massive atomic power plant whined down into silence, and with a matter-of-fact gesture Abna of Jupiter pulled out the master-switch, and then surveyed.

To land on another world was no novelty for the four who congregated around the vast observation window. Traveling through the deeps of space, their avowed intention was to bring scientific knowledge and uplift to those people of other worlds who might need it. To this end, the Cosmic Crusaders were prepared to devote their knowledge, wealth, and superhuman strength…and what was more, they were well capable of it.

Abna, the seven-foot, godlike, one-time ruler of Jupiter, was technically the leader of the quartet, but in every branch of science, save perhaps pure metaphysics, he was equaled by his phenomenally beautiful blonde wife, the Golden Amazon of Earth, eternally youthful and stupendously strong. The lesser lights in the circle of four were Viona, daughter of Abna and the Amazon, and Mexone, her husband, originally an inhabitant of a far-off world.

So, then, these four gazed upon the rocks and clouds of the deserted world to which they had come, and presently they glanced at each other.

“Nice little bit of untenanted rock,” Abna said. “I think it will suit admirably.”

The Amazon shrugged. “Up to you. You said you wanted somewhere quiet to work, and I can’t imagine anything quieter than this. We’ve circumnavigated the planet and there isn’t a thing on it, except rock.”

Viona turned from surveying, the amber sunlight setting off the glory of her coppery hair.

“I’m still not entirely clear what we’re here for,” she said. “Did you say something about a machine, Dad? We’ve been cruising around for such a long time I’ve almost forgotten.”

Abna indicated a series of photographs lying on the control panel bench.

“I propose to reconstruct the Probability Machine which gave us such a lot of trouble on the planet Tuca. You remember that at one stage I was projected by its probability waves into another space altogether—and there I glimpsed a world whereon natural laws don’t work. In other words—putting it baldly—love becomes hate, up becomes down, and backwards becomes forward. A complete inversion of natural laws.”

“And being of an inquisitive turn of mind, you want to find out more about it?” the Amazon asked dryly. “Well, I’m quite willing, even though I can’t believe that the sort of planet you mention is scientifically possible.”

“It isn’t,” Abna said simply. “Yet there it was. Now, having made that clear, let’s get busy.”

The Probability Machine to which he referred was complicated beyond belief, and had been dismantled stage by stage on the planet Tuca from sheer necessity. The machine, a product of trained scientists, incorporated waves of spatial stress, which, in turn, influenced the probability laws governing all matter. Working on the basis that atoms and their attendant electrons exist only in probability—a law long ago laid down by the Earthly German scientist Heisenberg—the machine was capable of disturbing the spatial probabilities to an amazing extent, even to shifting matter itself to an entirely new space—as had happened in the case of Abna when he had found himself unexpectedly projected.

Such a machine was of profound interest to the Crusaders, and in the knowledge that one day they would have a chance to study its workings in peace, Abna had photographed every intricate detail—photography of the nth degree, done to scale, stereoscopic, and in color. These prints, together with memory, would he more than sufficient to build the machine again in happier circumstances than before.

Accordingly, the four set to work, each one so versed in the arts of science that they did not need to ask questions. Abna divided the four photographic prints among the four of them, and the amazing machine tools incorporated in the Ultra’s equipment did the rest. Hour by hour there began to appear in the Ultra’s enormous workshop in the rear of the ship a tall, complicated electronic apparatus.

The four did not hurry themselves: there was no urgency about the business, and they had all the time they needed. In between spells of work and intensive concentration, they relaxed for eating or sleeping, or to log details of the barren planet to which they had come. At other times they look advantage of the planet’s brief night to survey the wonder of this front-seat view of the Milky Way with its vast iridescence of stardust. Tens of thousands of worlds and suns. Unimaginable populations—and beyond the Milky Way again that other strange ultra-space, which Abna had seen. It was small wonder that the Crusaders, constantly viewing such marvels, had minds that were almost godlike.

In all, it took a fortnight to complete the Probability Machine. It was powered atomically in a self-contained unit, and therefore, unlike its prototype, it was portable, even though there was no intention as yet to move the machine from where it stood in the workshop.

“As I reason it,” Abna said thoughtfully, as he and the others surveyed the completed apparatus, “this instrument works in five stages—the fifth stage being the ultimate one, and the one which projected me into that other space. It’s plain from what we’ve learned that it did it by transposing my electronic makeup into another field of probability altogether, a field arrived at by mathematical computation within the machine itself. Even yet its profounder mathematical workings are beyond us. We know what it does, but we don’t know how.”

“Which is often the case with scientific things, Mexone observed. “A catalyst, for instance.”

Abna nodded. “Quite so. Therefore we shall have to use Stage Five, as we’ll call it, and trust to luck that it repeats the effect.”

“You don’t intend to project yourself with no more to go on that that, surely?” the Amazon protested; and with a smile Abna shook his head.

“No. Last time the power was beyond control. This lime we have a time unit fixed which will make for a reversal of the process when we require it. I propose to send a preset movie camera that will begin to operate when Stage Five has reached maximum power. And I’m going to do it right now.”

The others watched as he placed the already adjusted movie camera in position, directly in line with the machine’s main power outlet—which resembled a fantastic snout of lenses. Only the lenses were not glass: they were of a transparent substance specially devised to allow free passage of radiation.

“Here we go,” Abna murmured, and depressed the power switch.

Instantly there was a deep humming from the machine, and a vivid display of internal pyrotechnics, visible through the transparent inspection window—then things began to happen. The cine-camera became hazed with an irregular ball of orange-colored light. It did not last long. It expanded rapidly, the camera becoming transparent as it did so. Finally there was a brief tremoring of the air from underlying shock waves, and with that the orange glow vanished, and the camera, too.

Abna turned and grinned. “One perfectly good camera should now be in ultra-space,” he said. “Photographing whatever happens to be in the field of view. It’ll come back automatically in ten minutes.”

He was right. When the time had elapsed, there was a sudden reappearance of the orange haze and in it there appeared the camera, gradually taking on density. Abna waited until the process was complete and then he switched off. Going over to the camera, he picked it up and examined it eagerly. It was unharmed—not even scratched—and had made its ten-minute recording.

“Everything all right?” the Amazon asked.

“Perfect.” Abna connected the camera to a viewing screen, and then switched off the lights. In silence they sat watching the cine-recording, each busy with speculations.

The ultra-space transition evidently commenced in the void itself—or at any rate that was where the cine-camera had started to pick things up. There was a view of completely unfamiliar stars, certainly not belonging to the Milky Way, and a vision of a planet comparatively near. Wrapped in cloud, it gave no clue as to what lay on its surface.

“Doesn’t tell us much,” the Amazon said, sitting back in her chair and musing. “Looks the same as any other world to me, even if it is in another space. What gave you the idea that things went backwards?”

“I sensed it,” Abna said, switching off. “Can’t you understand that at that time—brief though it was—I was almost exalted? I knew of the strangeness of the planet, and was convinced of it. I’ll swear it was not an illusion. I glimpsed people, too.”

There was silence for a moment, then Mexone made a comment.

“Just as well that camera didn’t actually hit the planet. It would have been either burned up or smashed to bits, at that speed. The time ran out at just the right moment.”

Abna nodded, then looked seriously at the faces turned toward him,

“We haven’t learned much, beyond the fact that I was right,” he said. “Do we have a look at this world, or not?”

“Naturally!” the Amazon said promptly. “Any planet that has a puzzle attached to it is right for us. You two think the same?”

Viona and Mexone nodded promptly. Though they did not say so, they were becoming increasingly bored with the sameness of everything.

“Very well then,” Abna said. “Let’s make our arrangements and get started. We’ll have to adjust the Probability Machine so that its influence incorporates the whole vessel. That way we ought to get projected into this other space.”

The Amazon, Viona, and Mexone took their places on the wall couches and made themselves ready for the takeoff.

“Ready?” Abna inquired, and at the murmurs of assent he engaged the ship’s drive. Instantly the Ultra’s huge mass rose swiftly from the desolate plain and swept upwards to the murky clouds. In seconds of time the clouds were left behind and there appeared the infinite darkness of space with its endless parade of gleaming stars.