'There's still a paradox,' Darla stated as we got moving. 'Where did the idea for the cube come from?'
'I told you,' I said.
'No, I mean the reason it came to be. Its reason for existing at all. The first cube prompted the speculation, which generated the motivation to create this one. But you're saying that this one is the first one. So… so, you see, it's as if-'
'The cube created itself,' I said.
'Yes! That's the only way you can look at it! It's impossible, Jake. Absolutely impossible.'
'Have an impossibility,' I said, handing it to her.
The plant foreman was sad to see us go. 'You will return sometime soon? Our brief association has been most rewarding and gratifying.'
'Sure, we'll come back,' I told it, not wanting to hurt its feelings.
'When?'
'Uh…' Nothing like being put on the spot.
'Will you consider postponing your departure? All our various subsystems are most distressed over your leaving. Individuals of paramount creative powers, such as yourselves, are very rare. We are very desirous of continuing to work with you on other projects.'
'Well, you're very kind, but we really must run along.'
There was a sound not unlike a sigh. 'Then please take our good wishes with you, and do return at your earliest convenience.'
'Thank you. We will.'
I wondered when the plant had last entertained visitors. Thousands; millions of years ago? It was cruel, in a way.
After Arthur had inflated the spacetime ship to full size, I shot the rig into the large cargo bay, and Carl tucked his Chevy into one of two smaller ones. We all boarded the craft. The illuminated spires and domes of the plant dwindled behind us as we sped toward the edge of the world, It was night on this face of Microcosmos, which Carl had dubbed 'Fiipside.' The moon surrogate rode low in the sky, and stars like diamonds on black velvet dotted the dome of night. Below, city complexes lay outlined in dim crosshatches, and a few stray lights glowed feebly in the dark countryside. A still, deserted world, Microcosmos was, eerie even by day, by night a place of silence and shadows and mystery. A chill went through me. Time was a thing of substance on this world, a weight bearing down like the stone mass of an ancient temple. I felt a sudden savage longing to get free of this place, this graveyard of the ages. It was dead here. There was death here. The world-disk flipped over as we swung around the edge, and seeing- Microcosmos in daylight again made me feel a little better. But not for long, because a reception committee was on its way to meet us.
'Oh, shit,' Arthur said, frantically swiping at the control box.
Dozens of variously colored fiery motes were streaking up at us. Arthur put the ship into a steep climb, but in no time a swirling orange vortex-phenomenon was hard on our tail. The thing looked very familiar. Arthur began evasive maneuvers.
'Arthur,' I said, trying to sound calm, 'what do those things do?'
'Oh, they eat things,' Arthur said airily. 'Like spacetime ships. Ingests them, sort of. An explosive device can't do much damage to us, nor can any kind of beam weapon. But that thing can snare us and slowly disintegrate us. It has enough energy to do that.'
I said, 'Oh.'
Horrified, I looked at Carl, remembering one of his Chevy's fantastic weapons, the enigma Carl called the 'Tasmanian Devil.' Carl swallowed hard and nodded.
I turned to Arthur. 'Are these the things that chase their targets and never give up until they destroy them?'
'Yup. How did you know?'
'Uh… what are you going to do?'
'Well, there's only one thing I can do…' Arthur said. The thing behind us was gaining, matching our every increment of speed, growing until we could see its boiling interior, a fiercely glowing furnace of demonic combustion. There was a suggestion of something else in there, a shape, a mad, implacable figure, a howling psychotic beast bent only on destruction.
'… and I think I better do it now.'
Instantaneously, everything around us disappeared-the Tasmanian Devil, the sky, Microcosmos itself. And in their place were endless stars, all around us.
We were in space.
'Dearie me,' Arthur wailed, 'I've really gone and done it now.'
He was silent, slowly moving his thick, stunted fingers over the face of the control box.
'Arthur,' I said after a long moment, 'what's happened?'
'Oh, nothing. We made a continuum jump, which we shouldn't have done near such a large mass as a planet, especially Microcosmos, since it has very peculiar gravitational properties. We had no choice, but that doesn't help much.'
'What's the problem?'
'Well, I have no idea where or when we are. None. It'll take time to get enough readings to make an educated guess. My uneducated guess is that we've jumped over ten billion light-years.'
Standing beside me, Darla put both arms around my waist and pressed herself against me. I needed someone to hug, too; I snaked my arm about her shoulders and held her closer.
'Well, this is a bit of luck,' Arthur said. 'Star very near. Not only did we not wind up in the middle of intergalactic space, we blundered on to a likely planet-bearing star.' He snorted. 'It probably has a brood of grungy ice balls and gas giants orbiting it. No good to us.' He sighed. 'Better check it out, anyway.'
The stars shifted suddenly. Then again. And again. Each time, a single star up ahead grew brighter, and with a few more jumps it stood out as a tiny disk against the spattering of glowing points around it.
'Looks awfully familiar,' Arthur said suspiciously. He shook his head. 'Couldn't be. But it's the right spectral type. Let's see if we can resolve a planet or two.'
Delicately, Arthur palpated the face of the box, which, I had come to believe, was some sort of direct interface or link between the ship's instrumentation and Arthur's powerful robot brain.
I scanned the star swarm around us. To our rear, the swarm thickened, congealing along a long milky band of luminescence shot through with dark clouds. I searched left and right, trying to pick out constellations.
'You won't believe this,' Arthur said. 'But guess where we are.'
'That's Sol over there,' I said. 'The sun. Earth's sun.'
'You just earned your astronomy merit badge, kid.'
15
'I'm going home,' Carl said, awestruck. 'I'm really going home.'
'Hold on, dearie,' Arthur cautioned. 'We know where we are, but not when we are. This could be Earth in one million A.D., or B.C., for that matter, or any time in between. So don't get your hopes up. That was a completely blind jump we made. The chances of our winding up here at all were approximately infinity to one.' Arthur shook his head. 'Amazing. If I'd aimed for here, I never would have made it. Not in one jump, anyway. To've done it with any degree of accuracy and safety, fifty would have been more like it.'
'Any way of finding out when we are?' I asked.
'Well, several. I could clock the rate of a few known pulsars and get a fairly good idea of the galactic epoch we're in… if I had a few known pulsars to look at. Trouble is, I don't have much in storage about Terran astronomy, not anything like what I'd need to make those calculations.'
'I thought you knew everything, Arthur,' Darla said. 'How much do you know about Terran astronomy?' Arthur countered.
'Not a whole lot.'
