TO PLANT A SEED
In a dark place which is filled with light, but none for seeing, are nine figures. They do not move.
People have been known to voice opinions:
1) “The seed? Well, I don’t know, now. Never had a garden myself. What kind of seed do you mean?”
2-6) Omitted because of similarity to 1).
7) ”Sure, I’ve heard of the Seed. Can’t see any reason for it. Why should they spend so much money for something that nobody will live to see? That’s what I say. We’ve got enough problems to solve right now without throwing money away on something billions of years in the future.”
8) ”If those people want to commit suicide together, it’s all right with me, but why use my tax money to do it? Even the people working on the Seed admit that there’s no way it can benefit anybody now living or anybody who will ever live in this universe.”
9) ”Never mind basic research, because there is no information to be gained. And I really am not concerned about the money required, not because I don’t think that it could be put to a better use, but because I don’t think it would be put to a better use, Seed or no Seed. My objection is that this project is the last gasp of the notion that man is master of the universe and the cosmos belongs to him. That notion nearly made the Earth uninhabitable in the last century and we’re better off without it. If we want to build a Seed and give the next universe the dubious gift of human inhabitants, why such a hurry? We have billions of years ahead of us. For once in our thoroughly botched career, let’s take time to think it over.”
* * * *
Dust does not fall, air currents do not flow, sound is not heard. The molecules of the air do not move.
The Seed was explained:
MODERATOR: But do you really think, Dr. Cullins, that anyone would dare to shut
himself off from the world that he knows, never to see it again, not knowing where he was going?
DR. CULLINS: Certainly. People have set out to colonize in the past, not really
understanding what they were facing. People have to set out to explore, not knowing what they would find or if they were coming back. And the Seed is even more fundamental in its thrust, calling out not merely to see something new that none have seen before, or to the desire for living space, but to the very survival of the human race. The drive to survive is potent in our instincts. This form of race survival is more abstract and must appeal to the intellect, but I believe that the drive to survive is as potent in the intellect as it is in the blood.
MR. GRAY OF THE NEW YORK TELEFAX: Still, Dr. Cullins, this proposal of yours is
hardly pressing us, for we literally have all the time in the world to prepare such an, ah seed, while more pressing matters concern us on our own planets.
DR. CULLINS: We may have all the time in the world and we may not. We don’t
know everything about stars and our own star might become nova in the next five minutes. Then it will be too late. In fact, far from having all the time in the world, our clear priority is the planting of the Seed which might take, at most, five years. Then we can return the resources that were temporarily diverted to the Seed back to the general pool of resources—though I doubt that such a comparatively small drop in the pool will affect those pressing matters that Mr. Gray mentioned, particularly since those matters have been pressing us for several centuries.
MR. MEISENHEIMER OF WORLDWEEK TELE-ZINE: But even if we don’t have
unlimited time, the question remains: why should we do it at all? To spread at a reasonable pace through our corner of the galaxy is a sensible endeavor. This is our universe, for we evolved in it. As long as we displace no other intelligent beings, surely we may colonize other planets, even in other stellar systems. But another universe would have nothing at all to do with us. It would belong to those beings which evolved in it and to plant your seed would be a—a new form of imperialism, usurping the rightful inhabitants. Let us stay in our rightful domain.
DR. CULLINS: Take any man now living, Mr. Meisenheimer, and in his place
might stand a horde of other animals. Just by being alive, you have concentrated a quantity of organic materials in one place and removed them temporarily from the life cycle. If that is evil, then you and I and every other human being should immediately commit suicide. If it is evil to send men into the next universe, then why is it right to send them to other stellar systems? The next universe is simply a continuation of this universe and man is as much a creature of that universe as this one.
* * * *
Excerpt from transcript of Meet the Media
. . . and one of the hardest spooks to exorcise is the notion that Man Was Not Meant to Outlive the Universe, though it is never stated in that explicit form. A century ago, or even later, the objection would have taken the form: we are going against God. Society is too secularized now for it to be so expressed, of course. I would, in fact, prefer to battle God rather than the faceless formless commandment that exists in the minds of so many. He would be specific and I could cite the absence of specific injunctions against the Seed in scripture or employ extracts for my own cause. (I have some in mind, just in case.) And the old view of man as subduer of the earth is more favorable to the Seed than the modern one of Man the Destroyer. How can I fight this faceless spirit, ruler of cavemen who fear the open sky?
* * * *
From a letter written by Cullins to Cain shortly after the former’s appearance on Meet the Media.
Q: Is that letter of Cullins’ noble or merely pompous?
A: Both.
Q: I noticed a moment of hesitation back there when he said that the drive to
survive is as potent in the intellect as in the blood. Why was that?
A: He was being very careful not to say what he says in private: that the drive to
survive is as strong between the ears as it is between the legs.
* * * *
INSIDE THE TIME REFRIGERATOR
Does the McJunkins field work because of a flaw in the law of conservation of temporal momentum? Not really, any more than the operation of a refrigerator disproves the fundamental principle of thermodynamics which states that heat tends to disperse. Translating the intricate mathematics of the McJunkins field of equations into plain English, the average time within the field remains constant. Just as a refrigerator makes the air within its walls cold by raising the temperature of the air outside by an equal amount, the McJunkins field stops time within its enclosed volume while speeding time up elsewhere.
The amazing thing about the McJunkins field is that the region of speeded-up time is confined entirely to the surface of the field—a two-dimensional space!
* * * *
FOREVER IN A FEW SECONDS
When the field generator is switched on, a field is created and its size is determined by the power applied to the generator. Expanding from the center of the field is a sphere of slowed time. Like a balloon being blown up inside another balloon, the sphere of slow time expands and the hollow sphere of fast time decreases in volume. When the two volumes are equal, a clock in the slow zone would be running only half as fast as it would in the fast zone; and the same clock, taken outside the field, would run one-third faster than it would in the slow zone.
The changing of times in the two zones, as well as the rate of expansion of the slow field, slows as the thickness of the fast zone approaches zero. The rate of change is what scientists call asymptotic.
For an example of an asymptotic rate of change, consider a grasshopper that is trying to cover a distance of two feet. On the first jump, he covers half the distance, landing a foot from his goal, but he now is tired and his next jump covers only half a foot. He has still less energy this time and his third jump will take him forward just one-fourth of a foot.
When will the grasshopper reach his goal? Never, obviously, although he can get as close to it as he likes. Likewise, the thickness of the field of fast time should never reach zero and the time flow in the slow zone should never come to a full halt.
This, however, is a mathematically pure situation. Obviously, the grasshopper can continue to make smaller jumps only if his body shrinks with each jump and can shrink without limit, which cannot happen. Similarly, the time flow will slow down without ever reaching zero only if time can be divided into ever smaller intervals. It cannot. We know that a piece of metal cannot be divided forever without finally being reduced to one atom, which must be divided into subatomic particles, which particles can be divided into quarks but no further—for quarks cannot be divided into anything smaller! There simply is no particle of matter which is smaller than a quark. Similarly, the quantum is the smallest possible amount of energy that can exist. As we have known since Samuel Soto’s electrotemporal equations were experimentally verified, both space and time likewise have a quantum structure. If you divide a second into two halves, then into quarters, then continue, you will reach a unit of time which cannot be divided.
Dividing a second may sound like a fanciful notion, but the McJunkins field is constantly dividing time into smaller units. And, as the zone of slow time expands, the moment comes when the rate of slow time flow is one time quantum away from being zero. At the same time, theory indicates, the thickness of the hollow shell of fast time is one space quantum thick. The next expansion of the field shrinks the hollow ball to zero thickness and time stops completely within the field. A process that mathematically, should take forever is completed in a few seconds!
* * * *
.. . The McJunkins effect does not invalidate the principle of Einstein’s Relativity that simultaneity is meaningful only for reference systems at rest with respect to each other. The rate of time flow in—or rather on—the surface of a McJunkins field is not infinite and it will apparently vary according to the Einstein transformations.
* * * *
WHAT GOOD IS IT?
Can the McJunkins field ever be more than a scientific curiosity? The final answer is not yet clear. The possibilities would seem endless—perfect suspended animation for starship crews or victims of incurable diseases, an impenetrable barrier, even an ideal refrigerator—but the simple fact is that we know of no way to turn off a McJunkins field once it has been created. For all practical purposes, the field, once established, will last forever. It might still have use as a weapon. A McJunkins field generator could be turned on and “freeze” an enemy for all time.
But this proposal, while possible, is impractical. Interestingly enough, the power requirement for establishing a McJunkins field is less dependent on the size of the field than on the total mass enclosed. The energy of several AN-bombs would be required to freeze even a small city. Small wonder that the first (and, to date, the only) McJunkins field established was not only small, but enclosed nothing but the field generator and a sphere of air!
In fact, only one proposal has been put forward for the use of the, McJunkins effect—and that proposal is little short of fantastic! It is so fantastic that one might be tempted to dismiss it as the suggestion of a crackpot. But the proposal comes from Dr. Roy M. Cullins and Dr. E. John Cain, both respected men in their fields.
We have known for three decades that the universe is cyclic in nature, Dr. Cullins points out. That is, our universe was preceded by another one which collapsed under its own gravity and was compressed almost into a geometrical point, then exploded in what has for a century been called the Big Bang. The matter expanded from the explosion and filled space, condensing into galaxies of stars. Our universe is still expanding, but the galaxies will, at some time in the distant future, cease their outward flight and begin the long fall back to the point where the universe was born, to fuse together again into an unbearably small space, then explode outward in a new Big Bang, giving birth to a new universe. This cycle had no beginning and will continue without end. And it is inconceivable that man, should he still exist in that far future, should survive the contraction of the universe.
* * * *
A LIFEBOAT FOR DOOMSDAY?
Or it was inconceivable until the discovery of the McJunkins Effect. The proposal of Cullins and Cain is that a standard starship be fitted with a McJunkins generator powerful enough to create a field surrounding the ship. That ship could survive the collapse of the universe, for not even the weight of the collapsing universe could force anything into a zone where there is no time, hence no motion. When the new universe expanded and condensed into new galaxies, the ship would still be unscathed in its field and the crew would not have aged even a second from the moment that the field was established.
As had been stated earlier, for all practical purposes a McJunkins field lasts forever—but only from the standpoint of a human lifespan.
Actually, a McJunkins field, left to itself, will not last forever. For every field established, a time would eventually come when the field would break down as quickly as it had been established. The time between creation and collapse of the field is a function of the mass within the field. A field which enveloped the mass of a star would collapse almost as soon as it was generated. The field that Dr. McJunkins created in his experiment enclosed five pounds of generator and less than a pint of air and would last several hundred times the span of a cycle of the pulsating universe. By carefully measuring the mass of the star-ship within the field, Cullins and Cain observe, the field could be timed to collapse as little as a few billion years after the new Big Bang.
In this way, they argue, the human race could survive the death of the universe itself.
And the McJunkins effect, far from being a trivial curiosity, would have been proven to be the most important discovery in the history of the human race.
* * * *
From the article, “The Incredible Field That Stops Time,” written by Roy Cullins under the pseudonym of David Lester for the telezine Popular Technology Monthly.
If one could observe them, the electrons in their vague orbits would be stilled, their positions no longer fuzzy zones of probability, but as definite as rigid crystal. But, though stripped of the cloak of the uncertainty principle, they are not revealed in their nakedness, for with time stopped, no medium of transmission can carry the message that they do not move.
* * * *
Seeds have grown in skulls:
Roy Cullins said this “I think that the real cause of the opposition is that most people are afraid to risk it and face a strange new universe, but at the same time don’t intend to stand by and see somebody else survive the death of the universe.” Unfortunately, he said it at the wrong time. A light statement, it weighed no more than a straw on the back of a camel. A door was slammed and he could no longer look down and see a face on the pillow.
What he needed, he decided, was a cold shower. After drying, he disconnected the phone in the hotel room and attached his own illegal phone with built-in scrambler, then whistled for Elfred Cain.
“It’s got to be you, Cullins. Nobody else would call me at this time of the morning, not even my mother if my father was dying, or vice versa. You’re a dead man now, Cullins. My trained hamster with the poison-tipped fangs will be on your trail and you’re as good as six feet under. I would send him after your ass right now, but he needs his sleep too. Good night, dead man.” Click.
On the eighth call, before which the unleashing of the hamster was threatened six more times, each time with exactly the same wording, the real Cain answered the phone; “Mmmmmmggglpf?”
“Nice try, E. J., but I wasn’t fooled. You might be that banal at this time of the morning, but you would have been too dopey to organize the message that well. All you’re losing is a little sleep. I may have lost Erika.”
“Whopened?”
“Remember, she said that if I mentioned anything having to do with the Seed during one of those times once more, she would split that minute? I’m afraid that I said—”
“Did she put her clothes on before she left?”
“Hmmmmm.” Pause. “I don’t see them anywhere.”
“Well, she won’t be back for that reason. The. Yawn. The least she could have done was wait until you got your rocks off.”
“Well, actually this was the sixth time tonight—”
“Cullins, are you sure that she left over the Seed?”
“Roll it. Do you really have a killer hamster?”
“No, the hamster is a clever fabrication so that your mind will be diverted and my Tyrannsaurus Rex will take you completely off guard when he pounces.”
“Seems to me that she would understand that I have a lot on my mind. The vote on the appropriation for the Seed comes up in the A. U. Senate next week.”
“You’re worrying? The Senate currently consists only of Senators whom you have charmed over to our side and those whom you are blackmailing, like that one from Massajeryork Complex who has the secret mistress. . . .”
“Yes, I was able to convince him that the hard core of his Americas Homosexual Party would take a dim view of her. About Erika—”
“You don’t want to talk about Erika, Cullins. You just want to talk. If you can’t swing one kind of ejaculation, you settle for another. By the way, you should give me a list of the Senators on our side. If I have to testify before that damned committee one more time, I’ll go berserk and start rending senators all around me. Sure wouldn’t want to kill the ones on our side.”
“You know, I’ve explained to her that it’s natural for the Seed to occupy my mind at such times. It’s all part of the same instinct. The urge that the race survive the death of the individual. And for the race to survive the death of the individual universe is the next logical step.”
“And that instinct is why you are balling a gal who’s on the vaccine?”
“Well, the instinct easily satisfied on the emotional level, and on the intellectual level I realize that there are too many people reproducing already for the size of the solar system. But the Seed cries out on both levels to be born. And I’m more of a mother than a father to it.”
“In that case, you had better get Erika to make an honest man out of you.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“Outstanding. When you can’t think of a comeback, you’ve stopped feeling sorry for yourself. Take a cold shower and go to bed. After you dry off, that is.”
“I’ve had one already.”
“Then I’ll have one. Good night. And quit calling me!”
“Get an unlisted number.”
“This number is supposed to be unlisted.”
“Get a listed number. You’ll throw me off the track.”
“I’ll throw you off something higher if you keep phoning in the dead of the night.” Click.
Cullins took another cold shower.
* * * *
Q: When one man calls another, seeking counsel regarding an emotional
disturbance, is it common for the other to greet him with levity?
A: It is when the disturbed caller averages one point two three calls per night not
earlier than one thirty a.m. and not later than four thirteen a.m.
Q: Still, does this not indicate a certain insensitivity and even cruelty on the part of
callee?
A: It might indicate that the counselor has his own problems and is using levity to conceal them and remain uninvolved. Look at this:
* * * *
She had black hair and blue eyes of the sort that do not really seem to be part of the face they are in. Cain liked the way the muscles in her legs moved when she walked. (Sociological context: Hemlines were in the rising phase of their cycle that year.)
He had been watching the way she moved for a month and a half now. Today he managed to head for the computer programming department where she worked and to keep moving in that direction without veering off and breathing a sigh of relief, hating himself at the same time. He informed her, clumsily, that there was a good show in town and maybe. . . . She was busy that night.
He mumbled his way from the computer programming department and knew that he would never work up the nerve to speak to her again.
Maybe some other girl. . . .
In talking to himself (mentally, fortunately, rather than audibly) he often used that word: maybe.
* * * *
Q: These two emotional cripples are the ones working to save the human race from
extinction?
A: Irrelevant. The nobility-ignobility of a cause is not determined by the suitability
of its adherents as models after which one might pattern one’s life. Moreover, it is possible that a more well-adjusted or more self-confident person might be completely uninterested in fighting for such a near-abstract cause.
Q: I reject that notion.
A: You may be correct, but you are supposed to be asking questions, not advancing
opinions.
* * * *
Beyond the orbit of Pluto the Seed orbits, dimly shining with the light of stars, including the sun, which is only slightly brighter than the other pinpoints of light. The surface of the McJunkins field is a perfect sphere and a perfect reflector, for no light can enter the field of timeless space. Contained in the zone of the field when it was activated was a starship. To speak of anything being inside the field now is to speak gibberish. Nothing can penetrate the field to determine what is within and no statement about the interior can be verified. Therefore there is no interior. Thus speaks positivism. In no way can it be proven that the nine figures still exist within and that they do no move.
* * * *
The Seed is not yet fully explained:
Billions thought this: Dr. Roy Cullins is speaking. Cullins himself, while watching and listening with the billions, thought this: a pattern of phosphor dots excited by electricity forms an image resembling me while other electrical impulses create sounds similar to my voice and both sets of impulses are controlled by sensitized molecular layers in a block of alloy, which is a recording made of my image and voice a few hours ago.
When he was very young, Roy Cullins had developed the habit of thinking that way. He thought it was the mark of a precise, analytical mind. He still thought that.
Cain thought this: Cullins is speaking. Again.
Erika’s thoughts were not of the stereovision screen. She wanted to get laid. Again.
The pattern of phosphor dots, etc., said, “It is necessary that the Seed be a starship. The cosmic egg will explode and the cosmic debris will fill the small but expanding universe with hydrogen gas which will condense into planets, stars, and nebulae. The new universe will not have been expanding as long as our older one has and will contain less empty space in proportion to solid matter, but the distances between spiral nebulae will still be immensely greater than between stars in our present galaxy. And, though it is not impossible that the Seed will be in the midst of an infant galaxy when the McJunkins field collapses, its most likely location at that time will be in intergalactic space. The average distance between galaxies in our universe is about three million light-years, though the galaxy M33 in Andromeda and the galaxy M31 are closer than that to our galaxy, and we have taken into consideration that the Seed may have to travel across such intergalactic gulfs. If the crew find themselves between galaxies, they will simply select the closest one and accelerate in that direction, using the del Gatto field drive, until they are traveling at a velocity which is within a hairsbreadth of the speed of light. Though the voyage will take more than a million years from the point of view of an observer in the galaxy ahead, only a few weeks will have elapsed from the viewpoint of the crew, as a consequence of the usual effects of Classical Relativity. At an appropriate distance within the galaxy they will begin deceleration, at the same time using the usual methods of selecting a sunlike star that has planets.”
“Then they will colonize that planet, Dr. Cullins?” That came from another pattern of phosphor dots, etc., which was an analog of the reporter doing the interviewing.
“Not necessarily. The first star selected might lack planets at the proper distance for a reasonable temperature. Or the planet might be at the right distance but have such a slow rotation period that the extremes of temperature would be too great. In that case, they would accelerate again and try another likely star. With the del Gatto drive, a suitable planet could be found in a few months. But there is also the possibility that the planets would not yet have cooled enough to develop life. In that event, the crew would send the Seed away from the planet and travel at near light speed until sufficient time has passed and the planet has cooled and oceans have formed. Then spore pods will be discharged into the oceans.”
‘Spore pods, of course, are containers of primitive one-celled life forms which have a DNA structure like that of terrestrial life forms but which were artificially constructed to approximate the first life forms that appeared on our planet. And your hope, Dr. Cullins, is that these forms of earthlike life will flourish in the seas of the new planet and evolve into more complex life forms not greatly different from those of the earth. Is that correct, Dr. Cullins?”
“Hell no, man! Where do you get all these weird ideas?” said the nonphosphorus Cullins.
“Yes,” agreed the Cullins of the phosphors. “Of course the evolution will certainly take several billion years, during which time the crew of the Seed will spend time on another round trip at near light speed. When they return, an earth-like ecology should be present, allowing a hospitable environment in which present terrestrial plants and animals could function. And they will have fertilized seeds and ova preserved by freezing and the equipment for nurturing them. The new world will have both familiar and strange life forms on it, but all will be children of Earth.”
“What if the crew finds a suitable planet which already has life on it, Dr. Cullins?”
“Precisely the same thing that we will do as we spread our colonies through the galaxy. They will land and determine if they and the terrestrial life forms can survive alongside the alien life forms. If they cannot, they will have to search elsewhere.”
“Isn’t the crew rather small for such an undertaking, Dr. Cullins?”
“Bastard!” said the dotless Cullins, speaking the thought aloud that he had kept silent when the recording had been made.
The Cullins of the phosphor dots was apparently calm and genial. “As is the usual case with starships, the majority of the crew exist as frozen fertilized human ova which will be thawed at an opportune time and grown in artificial wombs, then educated by the adult crew members and by the ship computer. This is the most economical way to colonize the galaxy and the same holds true for colonizing the next universe.”
“But the usual size for the adult and conscious crew of a starship is fifty, Dr. Cullins, not nine. Is there a reason for this?”
“You’re hurting me,” Erika protested.
“Sorry,” said the dotless Cullins, releasing his grip on her hand.
“As you know,” began the Cullins of the phosphors, “this is a starship of standard design and the standard starship wasn’t designed with a McJunkins field generator as part of the structure. And a McJunkins generator is a rather bulky piece of hardware. Therefore, space is less abundant and the number of adult crew members had to be reduced.”
“I didn’t want to have to admit that—” said the dotless Cullins, “that we had been unable to get funds enough to build a special ship and had to be content with the ship that was built for the ninth interstellar probe. That ship is not even close to being an optimum design. It cheapens the project. And might make it hard for us to get a special ship for the next Seed.”
“If there is another Seed,” said the only and dotless Cain. “You’re ignoring the point that you just talked around in that interview. The Seed could carry a crew of fifteen in spite of the McJunkins generator. But we could only find nine who were fitted to be the nucleus of a new race and wanted to go. We had to drive off the crackpots, and the ones who were suited only to be janitors, with threats of violence, but could only find nine volunteers who had the talents and the mental stability.”
“Which only shows that this is a decadent age. But the reality of the first Seed will grow in the public consciousness and reverse the trend. Even if this century doesn’t launch them, more Seeds will come.”
The Cullins of the phosphors had vanished from the screen. There was more to the interview, but the scene in the steevee screen had been shifted to an announcer behind the usual bare desk. “And now we switch to live coverage of the launching of the Seed, beamed from beyond Pluto to our relay on Titan, then from Titan to our relay satellite, then down to our studios. I remind you again that Pluto is never closer to Earth than three billion two hundred million miles, and, though our signals from the Seed travel at the speed of light, they take five hours, thirty-four minutes, and twenty-seven seconds to travel from our transmitter near the Seed to the Earth. Consequently, though our transmission shows the Seed prior to its launching, and this is a live broadcast, not a molecording, the Seed has, in fact, already been launched upon the seas of time.”
“Ouch,” said the only Cullins in sight.
“Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep,” Cain sang softly.
The announcer with the household word for a name beamed through his glasses in an extrovertedly intellectual way, then faded, leaving only his voice. The starship was visible on the screen. Not visible were the batteries of search-lights that were necessary to illuminate the starship for the benefit of the steevee cameras. The older TV cameras could have been operated with the addition of an image intensification circuit which would give them a sensitivity appropriate to the faint light of the distant sun, but the networks wanted to cover the event not just in color but in living depth as well. “It is now T minus one minute and counting. We cut to the Seed for a final word with the mission commander, David Kandt.” Cut they did, to an unsmiling, obviously nervous mission commander.
“In your last seconds in this universe, what are your thoughts, Commander?” asked the voice of a new announcer, this one sounding just as extrovertedly intellectual as the first.
“Well, nothing, uh, complicated. Just good-bye. And we will carry on in the next universe.” Obviously, the speech had been rehearsed, but not enough.
“Thank you, Commander Kandt,” said the voice of the first announcer, though he was on Earth and Kandt could not hear him. “I remind you again that the Seed has already begun its multibillion-year mission, but the transmissions are only now reaching us, due to the great distances involved.” The starship was on the screen again. “Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—field on.” The starship vanished, replaced by a mirrored sphere in which the images of the searchlights could be seen, as could the distorted image of the steevee camera. “And now the plaque will be placed on the Seed.” Figures in pressure suits drifted in around the sphere, guiding three wide bands of fabric which joined at a center. The three cloth tendrils snaked around the mirrored horizon like living tendrils, almost as if they were thrusting forward the tiny men on their tips rather than being pulled by them, as if the men were specialized handling organs at the tips of the three limbs. The tips came together and were secured. The men drew back from the sphere, and a metal plaque, brightly polished but dull against the perfectly reflecting surface of the McJunkins field, was visible at the juncture of the three fabric strips.
Cullins, Cain, and Erika realized simultaneously that the thing looked like an enormous athletic supporter. Looking at it made Erika hornier than ever.
The sphere grew on the screen, filled it. “Our camera is closing on the plaque that has been secured to the Seed. I remind you again that the transmissions are only now . . .” The plaque filled the screen. Superimposed over a spiral nebula was the figure of a man, nude but with his crotch emasculated by a shadow. (Maybe it’s his jock strap around the Seed, Cain thought.) In his right hand was the flag of the Americas Union. In his left was an hourglass. Inscription: On this day of September 9, 2043, men of this universe set forth for a universe not yet born. “The inscription reads,” the announcer began, then read the inscription that the audience had already read. “For the first time, man has sent himself into the future that his race might not die in the collapse of the universe billions of years from now.”
Cain suddenly gave the little twitch that signified something had occured to him. “He said ‘for the first time.’ But it might not be the first time for anyone. Suppose in the universe before this one a race put forth a Seed. Then they could exist somewhere in this universe, a race billions, maybe trillions of years old. We would be like children compared to them.”
“If they put out a Seed before, they would probably do it again, storing their knowledge in records on the Seed or Seeds. So they would always be a universe ahead of us, universe after universe, having an edge of knowledge on us. Bad if they didn’t want to see any other races surviving the contraction periods. Uh-oh.”
“Well?” That was Cain. Erika was sulking, silent. “The universe pulsates,” Cullins said, “so it will never have an end and it never had a beginning. So anything that could possibly happen will have happened, having had an infinite time to happen. So if anybody was going to put out a Seed, they would have done it. And if a Seed was going to succeed, say a Seed launched by the Oofians, it would have done so an infinite time ago. And the Oofians have had an infinite time to keep on surviving universe after universe, launching more Seeds each time, putting their entire population in Seeds, their population growing each cycle until it fills the universe. So why aren’t we armpit deep in Oofians on this planet? And, since we are not, why isn’t the Seed possible?”
Cain watched the screen. They were not showing the Seed anymore. This was harder to cover than a starship takeoff. A starship keeps on traveling into empty space, going somewhere. Fade out. The Seed came instantly into being, stayed put, did nothing; and would keep doing it for many billion years.
“If anything that can happen has happened, then somewhere along the line a race arose capable of challenging the Oofians, because of higher intelligence, say. Both races were wiped out. Or maybe every race that does this tires eventually and stops putting out Seeds.”
“Something like that, maybe,” Cullins said. “The Seed has to work.” He began to caress Erika, too gently to suit her.
Cain left, though they would have paid no attention to him anyway.
* * * *
Q: This circus is the salvation of the race?
A: I refer you to my previous answer concerning the nobility-ignobility of ends
versus means. Moreover, journalists and politicians have generally been the worst of the race, not the best, and this fete is of their staging. I might add that you are judging by those who have been left behind, fated to persist in their own deaths, even before the death of the universe, and not by those who have been sent into the future.
Q: But that Erika ... she is the female companion of the instigator of the Seed but
behaves like a nymphomaniac, caring nothing about the Seed. Why cannot he have a Brünnhilde at his side?
A: One more question like that and I will suspect you of harboring a perverted
desire to see women burned alive. Her behavior is hardly surprising, for she is a nymphomaniac, and one with an IQ of ninety. She meets Cullins’ needs, so there is no cause for worry. Perhaps he throws the energy that others use in creating a normal sexual relationship into fighting for the Seed. Perhaps he is incapable of a normal relationship and this is his adjustment. It is more of an adjustment than Cain has made. The main point is that you are judging them by their more pitiable failings and not by their nobler aspects.
Q: Speaking of nobler aspects, why weren’t we shown the crew of the Seed?
A: Because they are a very stable and dull lot.
* * * *
Hearts caught in midbeat, lungs in midcycle. The blood, unmoving, fills arteries and veins as if it were stone. Life processes are caught in midstride, reactions not reacting chemical equilibrium replaced by stasis. A stable and dull lot they may be, but two of the crew, a man and his wife, have spurned the festivities and retired to their quarters, where now lurks the beast with two backs. Through experience and familiarity gained long ago, and with an eye on the chronometer, they have carefully timed the conclusion of their cooperation to coincide with the launching of the Seed. A hairsbreadth away from fluid eruptions, they are now motionless, ready to greet the new universe with the oldest challenge to death. Only an instant ago they moved with careful frenzy, but now they do not move.
* * * *
Some of the things that Roy Cullins and, Elfred John Cain worried about:
1) The crew of the Seed loses heart, daunted by the new universe in which they are lost, and turns the McJunkins generator back on, preferring to try the next universe. They are daunted by that universe and use the generator again, trying their luck with still another universe. Daunted by that universe, they use the generator again. . . .
2) The universe, though oscillating, is gradually running down and each expansion is smaller than the one before and the cosmos will eventually contract and not expand again. This time, maybe. Tough luck, Seed.
3) The universe, though oscillating, explodes more violently each time and will eventually expand without limit and never contract again. This time, maybe. Sorry about that, Seed.
4) The Oofians are real and wait until each intelligent race put forth a Seed, then moves in and wipes out the race, colonizes the sterilized planets, and puts each Seed in a museum of Seeds.
5) The estimated time of contraction-expansion of the universe is incorrect and the McJunkins field will collapse in the midst of the fiery contraction or explosion. Good-bye, Seed.
6) The natural laws of the new universe will be different from this one’s and the chemical processes of human life will not be able to function. Sleep on, Seed.
7) Men of the future will discover a way to turn off a McJunkins field, decide that the Seed is a cruel and evil waste of life, and release the crew.
8) Exposure to the McJunkins field makes humans sterile.
9) The events in each universe are exactly duplicated in the one before and will be triplicated in the one after and this repetition can be extended infinitely into the past and future; and an infinite number of Cullinses and Cains have launched an infinite number of Seeds an infinite number of times before and will continue to launch them forever; and they have always failed and will always fail, for the survival of a Seed would make the next universe different from the one before, therefore a contradiction, therefore. . . .
A crewman, to smother his nervousness, was smoking a cigarette when time stopped. Now the smoke is baroquely wreathed about him, more rigid than any metal, sculpted by the air currents which were once blown by the air conditioner until time stopped. Now, in a Now which does not cease, the air currents themselves are rigid and the fans of the air conditioner are poised. The life of the ship depends on many systems which must never stop moving. But now they do not move.
* * * *
The one thing that Roy Cullins and Elfred John Cain should have worried about:
The electromagnetic radiations which man can see or detect and measure and which he has learned to use to interpret the structure of reality can carry information which causes pleasure, awe, fear, pain, despair. The radiation carrying one type of information need be no different from that carrying another. For over a year a station on Pluto had been gleaning information from quanta that came hurtling in from the farthest outposts of the realm of matter. The information existed in a normative vacuum at first, but a context would soon be supplied.
When it was supplied, the crew of the Seed had been frozen in a perpetual Now for a little less than three years.
When the research team published its results, several days elapsed before several popular science writers realized the significance of the discovery.
The quanta said this: the universe does not pulsate. The gravitational potential of all the matter in the universe is not sufficient to overcome the outward kinetic energy of that matter. The nebulae will never cease their outward flight, will never come hurtling back to fuse into a new cosmic egg. And certainly there have been no previous universes that have contracted to reexplode and give birth to the present one. This universe is the only one that has ever been and the only one that ever will be.
The Seed had been sown on barren ground.
Cain had seriously considered suicide. He had not completely dismissed the possibility, but he wanted to communicate with Cullins, who shared the guilt. I did not do this alone, he had kept telling himself. He had thought that the sight of Cullins would underline that defense.
Instead, he found that the sight of Cullins made it worse. This is the man I followed, he now thought. My decision. Why?
Sometimes the banal is inevitable. “Have you heard the news?”
“That the universe will never contract? Of course. What do you want, Jack? You have the hangdog look of somebody who needs to be forgiven. I can’t do it. Only the crew could do it. And they knew that the Seed was a risk. A step into the unknown always is.”
Cain, in spite of his tendency to laugh off unpleasant matters, had admiration for dramatic gestures; therefore the small pistol in his coat pocket contained only one dart, which he had tipped with poison himself, rather than the usual anesthetic, and which he had intended for his own neck. At this moment he was tempted to put it to another use. “You don’t care. You’ve killed those nine people and you don’t care.”
“Not to mention the several thousand fertilized ova. But I do care. And I didn’t murder them. They believed in the Seed, just as I did. And at that time I thought that more Seeds would come. If I had known that no more funds would be given to us, I would have been on that first Seed. But I’m not and there is nothing I can do for them. And it won’t help them if I send myself out—yes, the bulge in your jacket is obvious.”
“Nine people, lost. They aren’t dead, but they will never live again. Nothing you say can change that. We put them there.” Cain was trembling, but from an internal cold, perhaps the absolute zero within the Seed.
“I won’t share your guilt, Jack. We made a decision after considering all the available data, then acted on that basis. And that’s all anyone can ever do. The only alternative is not to act at all. Stop making decisions and acting on them and you’re as frozen as you would be in a McJunkins field and just as dead; and it isn’t as clean a death. We couldn’t have waited until all data was in, because there is no way that we can ever know we have it all. Even now, we don’t know that. Maybe next year more data will show that the universe pulsates, after all. Or the old steady state theory might be correct.”
“You make the Seed sound noble!” Cain shouted. “Not now, not anymore, because it isn’t a seed, it’s a tomb. We didn’t just make a mistake because of erroneous data, Cullins. We were playing with human lives.”
“Which you have to do throughout your life unless you live in a cave by yourself. Understand this, Jack: if I had known that the universe was not a pulsating one, I would have stopped the project at all costs, even if I had to blow up the Seed. But, without that knowledge, the project was right. Everything I did was right. And if the human race ever stops acting on the basis of what it thinks it knows, paralyzed by the fear that its knowledge may be wrong, then Homo sapiens will be making its application for membership in the dinosaur club.”
“You really believe you were right.”
“I do.”
“I can’t. I’m guilty. I know I’m guilty.”
“I know that you can’t believe it. And I’m sorry.”
* * * *
Q: You should know. Will the universe ever contract or will it keep expanding?
A: No hope there. The nebulae will hurtle outward forever, even as the heat death
overtakes them and entropy triumphs.
Q: Perhaps some method will be found of collapsing a McJunkins field and the nine
can be released. How about it?
A: No such method will ever exist.
Q: How can you know for certain?
A: Take it from me.
Q: Is Roy Cullins right? Was the launching of the Seed the right thing to do? Was it
what had to be done?
A:
Q: Didn’t you hear me?
A: Yes.
Q: Aren’t you going to answer my question?
A: No.
* * * *
In a dark place which is filled with light, but none for seeing, are nine figures. They do not move. They never will.