The Seed of Evil

“It’s impossible!” he said in exasperation. “Rock is flowing past us! Living creatures appear from ahead, and drop behind. Yet we are unable to approach the centre!”

We drew a circle to represent the Earth, and resolved the mystery to the fact that the mass-meter gave two conflicting positions for the Interstice within that circle. Or was it some radically new geometry, where two quantities no longer add up to their sum? What do we know of the universe? We only have experience of the surface of our planet—perhaps, elsewhere, laws are different.

Experimentally, we drew in quadrant of the circle, and contemplated the figure. Joule drew in concentric rings, and we noticed that in the quadrant, the arc shortened in proportion to the radius.

It was a subtle thought.

Apart from the philosophical considerations, I also wondered whether the gauss shunt, by draining surplus energy back to ground, was somehow the source of an illusion affecting all the external instruments and the mass-meter. I could think of only one way to find out.

Captain Joule regarded me with horror when I requested permission to turn off the shunt.

“If the conjecture is correct,” he said in a hushed tone, “we’ll be blown to kingdom come.”

“What of it?” I cried, gesturing wildly. “We can’t carry on like this. We could as well be journeying in Limbo. We might get away with it if the shunt is out of action for only a few milliseconds.”

We did the thing secretly. With my own hands I assembled the timing mechanism and connected it to the bank. For twenty milliseconds the shunt was inoperative.

The meters did not even flicker.

“Try again!” Joule ordered.

Three times I repeated the experiment. Then I turned off the shunt permanently. Never having encountered the conditions for which it was designed, it need never have been built at all.

“That leaves the other explanation,” Joule said, “The philosophical one. But it entails a relativity more staggering than any our physicists have thought of—”

I should have known that his calm, inexorable mind would have produced the answer eventually, But as he was about to explain, the third subsurface attack began.

They were a small, swift raiding force which swooped down on us from the north. We never knew where they came from: there were no signs of the habitations we had seen on higher levels. Most likely they were pirates, or warrior nomads, for they were professional, ferocious—and more deadly than anything we had yet encountered.

What was more, they had learned how to crack a polarised field.

Perhaps our own equipment was too strong for them, or perhaps they simply wished to frighten us into surrendering, but for only two brief intervals did we hear the ear-splitting shriek of their appliance, the groan of the polarisers and experience the suffocating heat of a wavering field. Then again, the depleted resources of Weapons Section were brought to bear.

This was the fight that broke us.

The raiders’ main aim was to board us. We had expended what remained of our torpedoes, and were resorting to the less effective seismo-beams, when they expertly blew a hole in the hull. In Command Section, Joule and myself heard alarmed cries and strange clattering sounds. A few minutes later came the explosion, deafening in the confined space. A crewman had heroically blasted the section through which the subearthers were pouring.

Thereafter, the fight inside the ship was brief; yet it lost us our leader.

Three raiders who had escaped the explosion came swimming along the central well, hurling destruction in every direction from powerful hand weapons, and within minutes they had arrived at Command Section. Never will I forget the look on Captain Joule’s face as he reached for his handgun. Nor can I describe it, for I saw every emotion there, each distinct, yet none dominant.

Our adversaries were short, shadowy figures in bulky armour; humanoid, but with an odd serpentine slant to their bodies. Without pause, they fired, and Joule fell with a ruined right side, bringing down the foremost raider as he did so.

From the corner of the cabin, I disposed of the other two.

That was the last we saw of the sub-surface raiders. We never knew why they discontinued the attack, for our detectors were a mass of ruined equipment, and from that time we have never seen outside.

As the other officers came into the control cabin I moved Joule to a couch. His breathing was quick and shallow, and his face was hardened against pain.

“I’m done,” he whispered.

I put an arm beneath his shoulders and propped him up gently. He was weak, but his eyes were full of intelligence. “Joule,” I pleaded, “what’s happening to us down here?”

“This is my theory,” he said, speaking with difficulty. “Matter is a distortion of space. As matter becomes more concentrated … so the space it occupies becomes more concentrated.”

He stopped, and for a moment I thought he had spoken his last. Then he seemed to revive somewhat, and continued.