created electrons and protons, are themselves composed of electrons and protons. This I had not suspected. I am at a loss to explain it. I am beginning to believe that one will never find an end to the mysteries of matter and life. It may be that the electrons and protons you know are composed of billions of infinitely smaller electrons and protons.'
'And I suppose,' mocked Scott, 'that you, the Creator, may be merely a bit of synthetic life living in a universe that is in turn merely a mass of matter in some greater laboratory.'
'It may be so,' said the Creator. 'My knowledge has made me very humble.'
Scott laughed.
'And now,' said the Creator, 'if you will tell me what food and other necessities you require to sustain life, I will see you are provided for. You also will wish to build the machine which will take you back to Earth once more. You shall be assigned living quarters and may do as you wish. When your machine is completed, you may return to Earth. If you do not wish to do so, you are welcome to remain indefinitely as my guests. All I wished you to come here for was to satisfy my curiosity concerning what forms my artificial life may have taken.'
The tentacles of light lifted us carefully to the floor and we followed the Creator to our room, which adjoined the laboratory proper and was connected to it by a high, wide archway. What the place lacked in privacy, it made up in beauty. Finished in pastel shades, it was easy on the eyes and soothing to one's nerves.
We formed mind pictures of beds, tables, and chairs. We described our foods and their chemical composition. Water we did not need to describe. The Creator knew instantly what it was. It, of all the necessities of our life, however, seemed the only thing in common with our earth contained in this ultra-universe into which we had projected ourselves.
In what seemed to us a miraculously short time our needs were provided. We were supplied with furniture, food and clothing, all of which apparently was produced synthetically by the Creator in his laboratory.
Later we were to learn that the combining of elements and the shaping of the finished product was a routine matter. A huge, yet simple machine was used in the combination and fixing of the elements.
Steel, glass, and tools, shaped according to specifications given the Creator by Scott, were delivered to us in a large workroom directly off the laboratory where our three compatriots of the universe were at work upon their machines.
The machine being constructed by the lone gangling creature, which Scott and I had immediately dubbed the 'walking-stick-man,' resembled in structure the creature building it. It was shaped like a pyramid and into its assembly had gone hundreds of long rods.
The machine of the elephant-men was a prosaic affair, shaped like a crude box of some rubber material, but its inner machinery, which we found to be entirely alien to any earthly conceptions, was intricate.
From the first the walking-stick-man disregarded us except when we forced our attentions on him.
The elephant-men were friendly, however.
We had hardly been introduced into the workshop before the two of them attempted to strike up an acquaintaince with us.
We spoke to them as they stood before us, but they merely blinked their dull expressionless eyes. They touched us with their trunks, and we felt faint electric shocks which varied in intensity, like the impulses traveling along a wire, like some secret code tapped out by a telegrapher.
'They have no auditory sense,' said Scott. 'They talk by the transmission of electrical impulses through their trunks. There's no use talking to them.'
'And in a thousand years we might figure out their electrical language,' I replied.
After a few more futile attempts to establish communication Scott turned to the task of constructing the time-power machine, while the elephant-men padded back to their own work.
I walked over to the walking-stick-man and attempted to establish communication with him, but with no better results. The creature, seeming to resent my interruption of his work, waved his hands in fantastic gestures, working his mouth rapidly. In despair, I realized that he was talking to me, but that his jabbering was pitched too high for my ear to catch Here were representatives of three difference races, all three of a high degree of intelligence else they never would have reached this superplane, and not a single thought, not one idea could they interchange. Even had a communication of ideas been possible, I wondered if we could have found any common ground of understanding.
I stared at the machines. They were utterly different from each other and neither bore any resemblance to ours. Undoubtedly they all operated on dissimilar principles.
In that one room adjoining the main laboratory were being constructed three essentially different types of mechanisms by three entirely different types of beings. Yet each machine was designed to accomplish the same result and each of the beings was striving for the same goal!
Unable to assist Scott in his building of the time-power machine, I spent the greater part of my waking hours in roaming about the laboratory, in watching the Creator at work. Occasionally I talked to him. At times he explained to me what he was doing, but I am afraid I understood little of what he told me.
One day he allowed me to look through a microscope at a part of the matter he had told us contained our universe.
I was unprepared for what I saw. As I peered into the complicated machine, I saw protons, electrons! Judged by earthly standards, they were grouped peculiarly, but their formation corresponded almost exactly to our planetary system. I sensed that certain properties in that master-microscope created an optical illusion by grouping them more closely than were their actual corresponding distances. The distance between them had been foreshortened to allow an entire group to be within a field of vision.
But this was impossible! The very lenses through which I was looking were themselves formed of electrons and protons! How could they have any magnifying power?
The Creator read my thoughts and tried to explain, but explanation was merely a blur of distances, a mass of tlandish mathematical equations and a pyramiding of °tupendous formulas dealing with the properties of light. I alized that, with the Creator, the Einstein equations were flementary, that the most intricate mathematics conceived by man were as rudimentary to him as simple addition.
He must have realized it, too, for after that he did not attempt to explain anything to me. He made it plain, however, that I was welcome to visit him at his work, and as time passed, he came to take my presence as a matter of course. At times he seemed to forget I was about.
The work on the time-power machine was progressing steadily under Scott's skillful hands. I could see that the other two machines were nearing completion, but that my friend was working with greater speed. I calculated that all three of the machines would be completed at practically the same time.
T don't like this place,' Scott confided to me. T want to get the machine built and get out of here as soon as I can. The Creator is a being entirely different from us. His thought processes and emotional reflexes can bear little resemblance to ours. He is further advanced along the scale of life than we. I am not fool enough to believe he accepts us as his equals. He claims he created us. Whether he did or not, and I can't bring myself to believe that he did, he nevertheless believes he did. That makes us his property — in his own belief, at least — to do with as he wishes. I'm getting out of here before something happens.'
One of the elephant-men, who had been working with his partner, approached us as we talked. He tapped me gently with his trunk and then stood stupidly staring at us.
'Funny,' said Scott. That fellow has been bothering me all day. He's got something he wants to tell us, but he doesn't seem to be able to get it across.'
Patiently I attempted an elementary language, but the elephant-man merely stared, unmoved, apparently not understanding.
The following day I secured from the Creator a supply of synthetic paper and a sort of black crayon. With these I approached the elephant-men and drew simple pictures, but again I failed. The strange creatures merely stared. Pictures and diagrams meant nothing to them.
The walking-stick-man, however, watched us from across the room and after the elephant-men had turned away to their work, he walked over to where I stood and held out his hands for the tablet and crayon. I gave them to him. He studied my sketches for a moment, ripped off the sheet and rapidly wielded the crayon. He handed back the tablet. On the sheet were a number of hieroglyphics. I could not make head or tail of them. For a long time the two of us labored over the tablet. We covered the floor with sheets covered with our scribbling pictures, and diagrams. We quit in despair after advancing no further than recognizing the symbols for the cardinal numbers.
