issues. In this room, he told himself, history might have been written, the course of cosmic empire might have been shaped and the fate of stars decided.
But now there was no sign of life, just a brooding silence that seemed to whisper in a tongueless language of days and faces and problems long since wiped out by the march of years.
He looked about and shivered.
'I don't like this place,' said Caroline.
A light suddenly flared and blazed as a door opened and thought-fingers reached out to them, thoughts that were kindly and definitely human:
'Do you seek someone here?”
Chapter Twelve
Startled, they swung around. A stooped old man stood in a tiny doorway that opened from the hall — an old man who, while he was human, seemed not quite human. His head was large and his chest bulged out grotesquely. He stood on trembly pipestem legs and his arms were alarmingly long and skinny.
A long white beard swept over his chest, but his great domed head was innocent of even a single hair. Across the space that separated them, Gary felt the force of piercing eyes that stared out from under shaggy eyebrows.
'We're looking for someone,' said Gary, 'to give us information.”
'Come in,' shrieked the thought of the old man. 'Come in. Do you want me to catch my death of cold holding the door open for you?”
Gary grasped Caroline by the hand. 'Come on,' he said.
At a trot, they crossed the room, ducked through the door. They heard the door slam behind them and turned to look at the old man.
He stared back at them. 'You are human beings,' said his thoughts. 'People of my own race. But from long ago.”
'That's right,' said Gary. 'From many millions of years ago.”
They sensed something that almost approached disbelief in the old man's thoughts.
'And you seek me?”
'We seek someone,' said Gary. 'Someone who may tell us something that may save the universe.”
'Then it must be me,' said the old man, 'because I'm the only one left.”
'The only one left!' cried Gary. 'The last man?”
'That's right,' said the old man, and he seemed almost cheerful about it.
'There were others but they died. All men's life spans must sometime come to an end.”
'But there are others,' persisted Gary. 'You can't be the last man left alive.”
'There were others,' said the old one, 'but they left. They went to a far star. To a place prepared for them.”
A coldness gripped Gary's heart.
'You mean they died?”
The old man's thoughts were querulous and impatient.
'No, they did not die. They went to a better place. To a place that has been prepared for them for many years. A place where they could not go until they were ready.”
'But you?' asked Gary.
'I stayed because I wanted to,' said the old man. 'Myself and a few others.
We could not forsake Earth. We elected to stay. Of those who stayed all the others have died and I am left alone.”
Gary glanced around the room. It was tiny, but comfortable. A bed, a table, a few chairs, other furniture he did not recognize.
'You like my place?' asked the old man.
'Very much,' said Gary.
'Perhaps,' said the old man, 'you would like to take off your helmets. It's warm in here and I keep the atmosphere a little denser than it is outside.
Not necessary that I do so, of course, but it is more comfortable. The atmosphere is getting pretty thin and hard to breathe.”
They unfastened their helmets and lifted them off. The air was sharp and tangy, the room was warm.
'That's better,' said Caroline.
'Chairs?' asked the old man, pointing out a couple.
They sat and he lowered his old body into another.
'Well, well,' he said, and his thoughts had a grandfatherly touch about them, 'humans of an earlier age. Splendid physical specimen, the two of you. And fairly barbaric still — but the stuff is in you. You use your mouths to talk with and man hasn't talked with other than his thoughts for thousands and thousands of years. That in itself would set you pretty far back.”
'Pretty far is right,' said Gary. 'We are the first humans who ever left the solar system.”
'That is far,' said the old man. 'Far, far…”
His sharp eyes watched them closely. 'You must have an interesting story,”
be suggested.
'We have,' said Caroline and swiftly they told it to him, excitedly, first one and then the other talking, adding in details, explaining situations, laying before him the problems which they faced.
He listened intently, snapping questions now and then, his bright old eyes shining with the love of adventure, the wrinkles in his face taking on a kind benevolence as if they might be children, home from the first day of school, telling of all the new wonders they had met.
'So you came to me,' he said. 'You came trundling down a crazy timepath to seek me out. So that I could tell you the things you need to know.”
Caroline nodded. 'You can tell us, can't you?' she asked. 'It means so much to us — so much to everyone.”
'I wouldn't worry,' said the old man. 'If the universe had come to an end, I wouldn't be here. You couldn't have come to me.”
'But maybe you aren't real,' said Caroline. 'Maybe you are just a shadow. A probability…”
The oldster nodded and combed his beard with gnarled fingers. The breath wheezed in his mighty chest.
'You are right,' he agreed. 'I may be only a shadow. This world of mine may be no more than a shadow- world. I sometimes wonder if there is any reality at all — if there is anything but thought. Whether it may not be that some gigantic intelligence has dreamed all these things we see and believe in and accept as real… if the giant intelligence may not have set mighty dream stages and peopled them with actors of his imagination. I wonder at times if all the universes may be nothing more than a shadow show. A company of shadowy actors moving on a shadow stage.”
'But you can tell us,' pleaded Caroline. 'You will tell…”
His old eyes twinkled. 'I will tell you, yes, and gladly. Your fifth dimension is eternity. It is everything and nothing… all rolled into one.
It is a place where nothing has ever happened and yet, in a sense, where everything has happened. It is the beginning and the end of all things. In it there is no such thing as space or time or any other phenomena which we attribute to the four-dimensional continuum.”
'I can't understand,' said Caroline, lines of puzzlement twisting her face.
'It seems so hopeless, so entirely hopeless. Can it be explained by mathematics?”
'Yes,' said the old man, 'but I'm afraid you wouldn't understand. The mathematics necessary to explain it weren't evolved until just a few thousand years ago.”
He stroked the beard down smoothly over his pouter-pigeon chest.
'I do not wish to make you feel badly,' he declared, 'but I can't see how you would have the intelligence to
