electrictransformer.
"If you've ever studied any abstract mathematical system you'll be ableto understand how the changing of one basic axiom can alter the wholestructure almost beyond recognition. Suppose that change in a basicaxiom were not a clean change, but that for a time both the axiom andits alternative were to be used interchangeably and unpredictably. Youwould have results that were double-valued. You would have contradictoryresults following from whatever you began with until the old axiom gotweeded out entirely.
"Perhaps you can see that well enough to understand everything. I hopeso, Martha. If you can I can skip the landing. We DID land. We crashed,and we landed safely. We also did something else. I think that whenthey check the records they'll find that the _Endore_ also came back toEarth and reported that it hadn't actually landed on Metapor. It did allthose things--returned over a year ago, landed safely, and was crushedin landing. If you could see HOW it could do all those things--it's likethe page in a book; you pass it if you look for it, and find it if youdon't look for it.
"It's happening here on Earth right now and will keep on happening untilthe old basics that contradict the new ones are no longer operating. Yousee, Martha, we knew that would happen. That's why we came back. The newsystem is so much more perfect than the old. SHE taught it to us when welanded. Ford Gratrick and his fellow objectors were killed in the shipthat crashed. They also were on the ship that came back to Earth.They're alive and they're dead."
Martha's face was a mask of confusion. She was trying to understand andnot knowing how. Ren saw this and tried again.
"Suppose we try from this angle," he said patiently. "If a car is goingten miles an hour it will be ten miles farther on at the end of an hour.If it goes twenty miles an hour it will be twenty miles farther on. Butsuppose it goes both ten miles an hour and twenty miles an hour. At theend of an hour it will be ten miles and twenty miles along, andaccording to what the Earth is used to it would have to become two carsto do that.
"If it went every speed from zero to twenty miles an hour it would haveto become an infinite number of cars, and occupy every position from thestarting point to a twenty-mile distance at the end of an hour. Thatwould be the conventional conclusion to the abstract problems. With thenew basics it does just that--except that it is still just one car, andyet never was just one car and never will be. It CAN'T be, because thereis no such thing, in the new system, as a one thing.
"I myself am not Ren Gravenard, only Ren Gravenard, or anything elsethat your old ideas can conceive of. You'll see, Martha. The whole worldwill see soon, just as I did after we had been on Metapor a short whileand had gotten the contradictions out of my mind and my structure."
"Then what are you?" Martha asked tensely.
"I'm the crew of the _Endore_," Ren said softly. "I'm Ren Gravenard hereand now because that is the only thing you can accept at present.I'm--Her, the incomprehensible."
A question rose in Martha's mind. She drew back from the question asfrom the brink of the Abyss, yet felt drawn magnetically toward it. Renwatched and knew what that question would be. She opened her lips.
"Who--am I?" she asked.
"Look at your hands," Ren said.
Martha looked down at her hands resting on the edge of the table. Theywere large, gnarled, strong--the hands of a man. She flexed them. Theywere smooth and skillful.
Wonderingly she raised her eyes to look at her companion across thetable. Her companion was--herself and she was Ren Gravenard. Anythingelse would have been--unthinkable.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In 2027 A.D., just seventy-five years after the first space flight,a dangerous disease was brought to Earth which wiped out almost amillion lives before a cure was found. Immediately an elaboratequarantine procedure was developed to take care of any possibleeventuality. This also included the psych screening routine to check onthe sanity and normalcy of returning space crews.
One feature of emergency quarantine was the creation of the spaceportzone, an area with a radius of fifty miles about the spaceport, whichduring quarantine was to be blocked off with nothing permitted to goeither in or out.
For all-out quarantine as in this present case, a temporary planetquarantine was to be imposed, preventing the landing or taking off ofany space ship at all.
Other measures would take effect if and when they became necessary, suchas national quarantine, continent quarantine, and even harsh measures ifthey became necessary.--ED.
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ April 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant spellings have been retained.
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