[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, October 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The little man with the gray beard stared at me and I stared back athim. "This is getting us nowhere," I remarked, "nowhere at all."
He nodded and sat down on the hard stone. We were trapped under thebuilding. The house had come down over us when the bomb landed in thestreet. The rest of the tenants were probably away or dead. Apparentlyonly the little old man who lived on the second floor rear and I hadgotten down to the bomb-proof cellar in time. And now we were trapped.
"We'll have to wait until they dig us out," I said. We couldn'tpossibly dig our own way out. Too much blocked us in. We were buriedbeneath tons of brick, rubbish and beams. They were probably busy inthe street outside, trying to rescue the people in other, less-damagedbuildings. Then again there might be fire, and the noise effectivelyblocked any chance of their hearing us.
I saw him only by the light of my little pocket flash. That wouldn'tlast very long. Our space was remarkably limited. This shelter had beena part of the cellar. It had been blocked off and roofed over, buteven so, part of it fell in—the part with the supplies and stuff—thepart opening on the exit.
"Well," I said, just to say something, "what do we do now? Sit aroundand wait to die?"
The little old man wrinkled his brow in thought. He didn't seem tooworried about dying. I guess when you're his age and have a long graybeard you get reconciled to the prospect. But I was young, and franklyI didn't like the idea at all.
"I think I know a way," the little old man said finally, "but it willseem like madness. Probably it is. It's never been tried. It may neverwork."
I seized him by the lapels. "Any way is better than none. I'd ratherdie trying than sitting down moping my life away. Tell it to me."
"You won't laugh? You will take whatever I say seriously?" the littleold man asked anxiously.
I saw he didn't want to die the object of scorn, and I saw also that hemust have something pretty odd up his sleeve. "No," I answered, "youwon't hear a peep out of me."
"Then," said the old man, "if you can prepare yourself, you could walkout through the rocks."
In spite of my promise, I gasped. But then I squelched myself andthought that if I was with a lunatic, I might as well make the mostof it. He was now the other half of my universe and so standards hadchanged. Facing death, any straw will do.
"Proceed," I said. "Explain further."
"Rocks," said the little old man—I guess he must have been a scientistof some sort—"and all other matter are composed of nothing mainly,with a little vibration thrown in."
I kept my mouth shut. I wasn't going to say anything to the contraryeven if he claimed black was white.
"Matter," he went on, "is composed entirely of atom. Atoms are brokendown to electrons and protons and their kin. They, in turn, appear tobe nothing but charges of electricity, charges of energy, not matter.So that all matter is really just a manifestation of energy in apeculiar state of stress."
I waited. This made sense. I began to recognize some of the things Ihad learned years ago in high school physics.
"Between the vortices of energy which make up the building-blocks ofmatter, there are comparatively vast stretches of just plain emptyspace. Within the atom, almost all is vacuum. Between molecules, morevacuum. In a so-called solid mass, it could be demonstrated that lessthan a quadrillionth part of its mass has