a pleading quality.”
He brushed his coat sleeve across his brow.
'It's all so confusing,' he confessed.
'But,' asked Herb, 'why would anyone send messages to Pluto? Until men came here, there was no life on the planet. Just a barren planet, without any atmosphere, too cold for anything to live. The tail end of creation.”
Kingsley stared solemnly at Herb.
'Young man,' he said, 'we must never take anything for granted. How are we to say there never was life or intelligence on Pluto? How do we know that a great civilization might not have risen and flourished here aeons ago? How do we know that an expeditionary force from some far-distant star might not have come here and colonized this outer planet many years ago?”
'It don't sound reasonable,' said Herb.
Kingsley gestured impatiently.
'Neither do these signals sound reasonable,' he rumbled. 'But there they are. I've thought about the things you mention. I am damned with an imagination, something no scientist should have. A scientist should just plug along, applying this bit of knowledge to that bit of knowledge to arrive at something new. He should leave the imagination to the philosophers. But I'm not that way. I try to imagine what might have happened or what is going to happen. I've imagined a mother planet groping out across all space, trying to get in touch with some long-lost colony here on Pluto. I've imagined someone trying to re-establish communication with the people who lived here millions of years ago. But it doesn't get me anywhere.”
Gary filled and lit his pipe, frowning down at the glowing tobacco. Voices in space again. Voices talking across the void. Saying things to rack the human soul.
'Doctor,' he said, 'you aren't the only one who has heard thought from outer space.”
Kingsley swung on him, almost belligerently. 'Who else?' he demanded.
'Miss Martin,' said Gary quietly, puffing at his pipe. 'You haven't heard Miss Martin's story yet. I have a hunch that she can help you out.”
'How's that?' rumbled the scientist.
'Well, you see,' said Gary, softly, 'she's just passed through a thousand years of mind training. She's thought without ceasing for almost ten centuries.”
Kingsley's face drooped in amazement.
'That's impossible,' he said.
Gary shook his head. 'Not impossible at all. Not with suspended animation.”
Kingsley opened his mouth to object again, but Gary hurried on. 'Doctor,”
he asked, 'do you remember the historical account of the Caroline Martin who refused to give an invention to the military board during the Jovian war?”
'Why, yes,' said Kingsley. 'Scientists have speculated for many years on just what it was she found — ”
He started out of his chair.
'Caroline Martin!' he shouted. He looked at the girl.
'Your name is Caroline Martin, too,' he whispered huskily.
Gary nodded. 'Doctor, this is the woman who refused to give up that secret a thousand years ago.”
Chapter Five
Dr. Kingsley glanced at his watch.
'It's almost time for the signals to begin,' he said. 'In another few minutes we will be swinging around to face the Great Nebula. If you looked out you would see it over the horizon now.”
Caroline Martin sat in the chair before the thought machine, the domed helmet settled on her head. All eyes in the room were glued on the tiny light atop the mechanism. When the signals started coming that light would blink its bright-red eye.
'Lord, it's uncanny,' whispered Tommy Evans. He brushed at his face with his hand.
Gary watched the girl. Sitting there so straight, like a queen with a crown upon her head. Sitting there, waiting, waiting to hear something that spoke across a gulf that took light many years to span.
Brain sharpened by a thousand years of thought, a woman who was schooled in hard and simple logic. She had thought of many things out in the shell, she said, had set up problems and had worked them out. What were those problems she had thought about? What were the mysteries she had solved? She was a young, rather sweet- faced kid, who ought to like a good game of tennis, or a dance and she'd thought a thousand years.
Then the light began to blink and Gary saw Caroline lean forward, heard the breath catch sharply in her throat. The pencil she had poised above the pad dropped from her fingers and fell onto the floor.
Heavy silence engulfed the room, broken only by the whistling of the breath in Kingsley's nostrils. He whispered to Gary: 'She understands! She understands…”
Gary gestured him to silence.
The red light blinked out and Caroline swung around slowly in the chair.
Her eyes were wide and for a moment she seemed unable to give voice to the words she sought.
Then she spoke. 'They think they are contacting someone else,' she said.
'Some great civilization that must have lived here at one time. The messages come from far away. From even farther than the Great Nebula. The Nebula just happens to be in the same direction. They are puzzled that we do not answer. They know someone has been trying to answer. They're trying to help us to get through. They talked in scientific terms I could not understand. Something to do with the warping of space and time, but involving principles that are entirely new. They want something and they are impatient. It seems there is a great danger someplace. They think that we can help.”
'Great danger to whom?' asked Kingsley.
'I couldn't understand,' said Caroline.
'Can you talk back to them?' asked Gary. 'Do you think you could make them understand?”
'I'll try,' she said.
'All you have to do is think,' Kingsley told her. 'Think clearly and forcefully. Concentrate all that you can, as if you were trying to push the thought away from you. The helmet picks up the impulses and routes them through the thought projector.”
Her slim fingers reached out and turned a dial. Tubes came to life and burned into a blue intensity of light. A soaring hum of power filled the tiny room.
The hum became a steady drone and the tubes were filled with a light that hurt one's eyes.
'She's talking to them now,' thought Gary. 'She is talking to them.”
The minutes seemed eternities, and then the girl reached out and closed the dial. The hum of power receded, clicked off and was replaced by a deathly silence.
'Did they understand?' asked Kingsley, and even as he spoke the light blinked red again.
Kingsley's hand closed around Gary's arm and his harsh whisper rasped in Gary's ear.
'Instantaneous!' he said. 'Instantaneous signals! They got her message and they are answering. That means the signals are routed through some extra-dimension.”
Swiftly the red light blinked. Caroline crouched forward in the chair, her body tensed with what she heard.
The light blinked off and the girl reached up and tore the helmet off.
'It can't be right,' she sobbed. 'It can't be right.”
Gary sprang forward, put an arm around her shoulder.
'What's wrong?' he asked.
'Those messages,' she cried. 'They come from the very edge of all the universe… from the farthest rim of exploding space!”
Kingsley leaped to his feet.
'They are like the voices I heard before,' she said. 'But different, somehow. More kindly… but terrifying, even so. They think they are talking to someone else. To a people they talked to here on Pluto many years ago… I can't
