The Aliens [сборник]

Wentworth swore. Then he cried furiously:

"It isn't so! It simply can't be so!"

He marched angrily to the nearest of the metal walls. Twin shadows of his figure were cast on before him by the landing-light beams. Weird reflections of the shadows and the lights—distorted crazily by the polished surface—appeared on every hand.

He reached the metal wall. He pulled out his flame-pistol and tapped at it. The wall was solid. He backed off five paces and sent a flame-pistol beam at it. The flame splashed from the metal in a coruscating shower. But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. When he turned off the pistol the metal was utterly unmarred. It was not even red-hot.

Haynes said absurdly:

"The sleeping beauty woke up, Wentworth. What's the matter?"

He saw Wentworth gazing with stupefaction at a place where the metal cylinder touched ground. There was the beginning of a circular clump of skit-trees. And he saw a stalk at a slight angle. It came out of the metal wall. The skit-trees were in the wall. They came out of it. He saw another that went into it.

He went back to the flier and climbed in. He turned the communicator up to maximum power. The racket that came out of it was deafening. He punched the call-button. Again and again and again. Nothing happened. He turned the set off.

The dead stillness which followed was daunting.

"Well?" said Haynes.

"It's impossible," said Wentworth, "but I can explain everything. That wall isn't real."

"Then we ram through it?"

"We'd kill ourselves!" Wentworth told him exasperatedly. "It's solid!"

"Not real, but solid?" asked Haynes. "A bit unusual, that. When I get back to Earth and am a happily married man, I'll try to have a more plausible story than that to tell my wife if I ever come home late—not that I ever will."

Wentworth looked at him. And Haynes grinned. But there was sweat on his face. Wentworth grunted.

"I'm scared too," he said sourly, "but I don't make bad jokes to cover up. This can be licked. It's got to be!"

"What is it?"

"How do I know?" demanded Wentworth. "It makes sense, though. A city that vanishes and re-appears—apparently without anybody in it. That doesn't happen. This can—this tank we're in. There wasn't any machinery around to put up a wall like this. And the top wasn't heaved into place. It wasn't lowered down to seal us in. It didn't slide into position. One instant it wasn't there, and the next instant it was. Like something that—hm— had materialized out of nowhere. Maybe that's it! And the city was the same sort of trick! Maybe that's the secret of this whole civilization we're trying to trace."

His voice echoed weirdly against the metal ceiling on every hand.

"What's the secret?"

"Materializing things! Making a—synthetic sort of matter! Making—well—force-fields that look and act like substance. Of course! If you can generate a building, why build one? We can make a magnetic field with a coil of wire and an electric current. It's just as real as a brick. It's simply different. We can make a picture on a screen. It's just as real as a painting. It's just different. Suppose we could make something like a magnetic field, with shape and coloring and solidity! Why not solidity? Given the trick, it should be as easy as shape or color. . . . If we had a trick like that and wanted to stop some visitors from outer space, we'd simply make the solid image of a can around them! It would be made with energy, and all the energy applied to it would flow to any threatened spot. It would draw power to fight any stress that tried to destroy it. Of course! And why should we build cities? We'd clear a place for them and generate them and maintain them simply by supplying the power needed to keep them in being! We'd make force-fields in the shape of machines, to dig canals or pile up dams. . . ."

He had raised his voice as he spoke. The solid walls and roof made echoes which clanged. He stopped short. Haynes said calmly:

"Then there wouldn't be any artifacts. When a city was abandoned, it would be wiped out as completely as the picture on a theatre-screen when the play is done with. But Wentworth—"

"Eh?"

"If we had that trick, and we'd captured some meddle-some strangers from outer space by clapping a can over them, what would we do?" He paused. "In other words, what comes next for us?"

Wentworth clamped his teeth together.

"Get in the pilot's seat," he commanded, "and put your finger on the vertical flight button. When you see light, stab it down so we'll shoot straight up! If we trapped somebody, and if we lifted it, we'd have something worse than a trap to take care of them with. They'd do the same—and they've got what it should take!"