Beyond the Stars by Ray Cummings

"In the plan of the universe," said Dr. Weatherby, "we find a conception gigantic, infinite, and yet it all has a simplicity. I want most earnestly to have you understand me, Leonard and Jim."

He gazed at us with a gentle smile. We had had our morning meal, and had slept long and heavily, and now it was evening twilight. We sat in the big livingroom on the lower floor of the Weatherby home. Dolores, as before, cuddled against her grandfather's side. Alice busied about the house, but presently she joined us. Dr. Weatherby's manner was as earnest as his words. He added, looking at me, "I want to be very clear, Leonard. This thing that we are to do-this journey, in which if you will not join me I shall make alone-"

"By the infernal, you won't make it alone while I'm alive," Jim cried. "The detective service loses its best tracker, beginning right away!"

Dr. Weatherby held out his hand. "My boy! " He could say no more. And on Dolores' face was a radiance. Then Dr. Weatherby turned to me.

"And you, Leonard-will you go?"

The direct question startled me.

Would I go out there into eternity? Beyond the stars, into eternal time, and over space unfathomable, to encounter what now no human mind could grasp? But, like Jim, I was practically alone in the world and I was free to make any decision without fear of hurting others.

Nevertheless, to give up my commission, as youngest commander of the great 40 N, to disappear, lose all I had earned, gave me pause. To return, perhaps never. Wanderers beyond the stars! Was this not, perhaps, too bold a thing for human endeavor?

I heard my voice saying quietly, "Why, of course I'm going with you, Dr. Weatherby."

I was aware that Alice had come in to sit beside me, her cool white hand impulsively pressing mine. And Dolores was saying,

"Alice, they're going! Isn't that wonderful? We're all going, just as soon as we can get ready!"

"A strange simplicity," Dr. Weatherby was saying. "First, let me make this clear: when I say universe-the construction of our universe-I mean everything that exists, or has, or will exist, the smallest entity of our infinitesimal atomic world to the greatest conception of what may lie beyond the stars. Does that sound complicated? Let me say again, it is simple."

He leaned toward us, with his thick, strong hands gripped in his lap. "I want you to realize first that we are dealing with infinities. The human mind is so finite, so limited. You must cast off most of your instinctive methods of reasoning. You understand me?"

"We'll try," I said.

He nodded and went on.

"Conceive a void of nothingness. No space, no time, no material bodies. Just nothing. That was the beginning. Do not try to wonder _when_ it was. A billion years ago. a billion billion. Not at all. You must not think of when, because _when_ implies time. There was no _time_. There could be no time without material bodies to create movement and events. For time in itself is nothing but the measurement between events.

"We have then, a nothingness. A vortex. A whirlpool."

"A vortex of nothingness? " I exclaimed.

"Exactly. Why, back in the 1920's, Leonard, scientists recognized that the basic entities of matter were only whirlpools. They hoped then to find some fundamental substance, like ether. But there is none.

"A whirlpool, by its very motion, simulates substance. And, in the last analysis, that is all which exists-an apparent solidity. Divide anything, probe into anything, you find only a _motion_ of something else smaller which is apparently real. But then take that smaller thing. Divide it. You find more empty spaces, more nothingness. And other yet smaller things in violent motion.