He was in inky blackness, utter stillness. He shouted but the sound died without an answer, without even an echo. He sensed a floor under him and groped forward, feeling his way with his hands, but he encountered nothing, not even a wall.
"Maybe," he told himself, fighting for calm, "I can work that trick we used before." He drew a shaky breath, pictured a standing lamp with an old-fashioned shade.
"Let there be light!" he murmured . . .
Brilliance sprang into being. Squinting against the glare, Roger came to his feet. He was in the center of a vast plain of polished glass that stretched away on all sides as far as he could see, featureless, unadorned.
"Well, at that, it's better than being blown up," he told himself. "I suppose my next move is to explore the place. In fact, it's my only move, so I might as well start walking. Unless . . . " He raised his voice: "Bicycle?"
There was a resounding crash. The twisted ruins of a hundred-foot Schwinn lay a quarter of a mile away, one forty-foot wheel spinning slowly.
"Smaller," he specified. "And closer to the ground."
"LITTLE BEING, DID YOU DO THAT?" a vast voice boomed out of the white sky.
Roger shied violently. "Wh-who was that?" he called.
Roger clapped his hands over his ears. "Do you have to talk so loud? You're bursting Q'nell's eardrums!"
"Is this better?" the voice spoke gratingly from a point a few feet above Roger's head.
"Much. Uh—who's speaking, anyway?"
"Uh, where are you, Mr. Ucker?"
"At present I am occupying a ninth-order niche within Locus 3,432,768,954, Annex One, Master Index Section. Why?"
"Well—it's rather disconcerting, not being able to see you."
"Oh, perhaps it will help if I extend a third-order pseudosome into your coordinate system."
A looming, misshapen form snapped into existence before Roger. It was twelve feet tall, and featured an amorphous head with a wide, slobbery mouth crowded with mismatched fangs, crossed scarlet eyes, pits like bullet wounds for nostrils, and arms of unequal length ending in satchel-sized hands with unpared nails.
"Yelp!" Roger cried, and backed rapidly away.
"Something wrong?" A booming voice issued from the monster's mouth. "I selected every detail of the projection from a catalogue lodged deep within your subconscious. Don't you find it reassuring?"
"You t-tapped the wrong level," Roger quavered. "Try again."
"How's this?" The figure flowed and shrank like hot wax, reshaping itself into a bulletheaded, pot-bellied, unshaven seven-foot ogre with warts and a harelip.
"Better, but still not quite on the mark," Roger demurred.
The figure dwindled still more; the face contorted like a rubber mask, settled into the benign features of an elderly professorial type. The stubble shot out to form a patriarchal white beard. The scarlet pupils disappeared behind thick bifocals, while the body became that of a retired librarian.
"Ah, I see by your expression I've hit it at last," a frail, breathless voice said in a pleased tone. "Ah—is something missing?"
"Clothes would help," Roger confided.
A serape appeared, draping the lean form. "How's this?"
"Not quite in character, Mr. Ucker," Roger pointed out.
Roger's new acquaintance worked quickly through several outfits, including football togs circa 1890, a cowboy suit with matched pistols, and a pink leotard before settling on a swallow-tailed coat, striped pants, and a starched shirt with stand-up collar.
"Much better," Roger approved, swallowing hard. "But don't get the idea I'm impressed. I can do similar tricks myself."
"Please don't!" The old gentleman raised a hand. "You have no idea what hob you play when you meddle with the continuum that way. As a matter of fact, you completely spoiled a gob of pre-material flux from which I was about to construct a third-order ecological experiment on this supposedly sterile slide."
"A sterile slide?" Roger looked around wildly. "I don't see any slide. Or much of anything else."
"Oh, forgive me," UKR said. "Of course you'd prefer a cozy third-order frame of reference." Instantaneously, the surrounding expanse of polished floor winked out of existence, to be replaced by a yawning abyss dropping away on all sides from the lone spire of rock on which they stood.
Roger shut his eyes tight. "Would you mind just putting a rail around the edge?" he asked between gritted teeth.
"Oh, a claustrophile. There; how's that?"
Roger opened his eyes cautiously. The rocky ground had become a floor surrounded by walls and equipped with stone-topped benches with Bunsen burners, retorts, mazes of glass tubing, and complicated equipment.
"It looks like a laboratory," he said.
"Precisely. Which brings us back to the problem of contamination. Before I sterilize the slide, I wonder if you'd mind telling me just how you managed to introduce yourself into a sealed environmental mock-up?"
"I didn't introduce myself. I was pitched in here by the Rhox."
"Dear me, this becomes more complex by the moment." UKR frowned. "You imply there are other foreign bodies in the system?"
"As foreign as you could get," Roger assured the old gentleman. "You see, the Rhox are planning to invade Earth, and they've built this trap system so they can spy out the lie of the land. It's not just an ordinary invasion, mind you: they're invading from time; they plan to occupy all ages simultaneously, and—"
"Earth? Earth?" The old man pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. "I don't seem to place it. A moment, please." He stretched out a hand and drew a massive volume from a shelf at his elbow. He riffled rapidly through, ran a knobby finger down a column.
"Ah, here we are. Hmmm. Molten surface, incessant meteorite bombardment, violent electrical discharges in the turbulent CO2 atmosphere?"
"Not quite, that was some time ago. Nowadays—"
"Oh, yes, how stupid of me. Giant saurians battling to the death in steaming swamps."
"Still a little early. In my time—"
"Of course; I have it now: mammals, flowering plants, ice caps, all that sort of thing."
"Close enough," Roger agreed. "And it's all going to be taken over by the Rhox, unless Q'nell succeeds in planting the null-engine—" He broke off. "But I'm wearing her body, so I must have the null-engine!" He felt over Q'nell's pockets, produced a small cylinder and held it up. "Here it is!"
The old fellow plucked it from his fingers.
"Careful! Don't twist the cap!" Roger blurted as the old man twisted the cap. There was a sharp pop! and a puff of smoke. UKR thrust his fingers into his mouth.
"Astonishing! It released enough temporal energy to reduce the average fourth-order continuum to mush," he said around them. "Perhaps I'd better just scan your rudimentary brain to see what other surprises you have to offer." There was a momentary pause. "Ah, yes. Very amusing." The old man nodded. "However, Mr. Tyson, I'm afraid you labor under a number of misapprehensions."
"Look here . . . " Sudden hope dawned in Roger's voice. "You seem to be a pretty clever chap. Maybe you could help get me out of the fix I'm in!"
"Don't give it another thought, my boy. I'll see to everything."
"You will? Wonderful! I suggest you start by pointing out—"
"The contamination is apparently a good bit more extensive than I thought," the old man was rambling on. "According to the data in your mind, these Rhox creatures appear to have introduced impurities into a large number of culture specimens—"
"Forget about your nutrient broths for a second," Roger cut in. "I'm talking about the whole future of the human race!"
"—and it will therefore be necessary to throw out the lot, I suppose. A pity, but there you are. But what does it matter, really? It's a small series, only ten billion, four hundred and four million, nine hundred and forty-one thousand, six hundred and two slides."
"Did you say ten billion, four hundred and four million, nine hundred and forty-one thousand, six hundred and two?" Roger inquired.
"That's a coincidence," Roger said. "That's exactly the same as the number of exhibits in the Museum."
"Culture slides," the old man corrected absently. "Not exhibits. And it's not a museum, of course." He chuckled amiably. "But as I said, I'll clear it all up in a moment, by the simple expedient of returning it all to a pre-material state. As for yourself, just stand by; won't take a moment, and it will be quite painless."
"Wait! You mean—all those places I saw were just glorified microbe cultures?"
"Hardly glorified; just run-of-the-mill random samplings. Among all the others in the files, they'll never be missed." The old man sighed. "It's really rather a bore, at times, maintaining a laboratory complex for a race of Builders that never use it."
"Dear boy, the Rhox are a minor impurity, nothing more. According to their own statements, as recorded in your rather limited memory cells, they exist in a mere fifth-order continuum. Having stumbled upon the Filing System, they seem to have managed to burrow into it at a number of points, probably with a view to nest-building."
"B-but—if they didn't set up the time trap—who did?"
"Naturally. On orders, of course."
"Those of the Builders. Didn't I mention—"
"Actually, they don't exist yet—or else they no longer exist; I'm not sure just what terms are applicable in your frame of reference. But they once did exist—or will."
"This is inhuman! All those people kidnapped and held prisoner forever, just so some absentee owner can take a look at them—if he ever gets around to it?"
"As for the inhabitants, that aspect was unintentional, actually. Intelligence of a sort seems to have popped up just in the last few gigayears, I note. Still, the damage has been done. And I must follow instructions, of course."
"Because that's the way I was built."
"—that thousands—perhaps millions of innocent people—and a few who aren't so innocent, I'll admit . . . " Roger paused. "Built?"
"Ummm. I'm a machine, you know, Mr. Tyson."
"This is going too fast for me," Roger groaned. "The Museum isn't a museum, it's a set of microscope slides . . . "
"Microscopic life is a hobby of the builders," UKR murmured.
"And the Rhox aren't the owners; they're just the termites in the walls . . . "
"And now I really must be seeing to the fumigation," the old fellow interrupted Roger's soliloquy. "It's been rather jolly, extruding a fragment of awareness into a little four-dimensional projection like this, registering emotions, experiencing time, feeling sensory stimuli, struggling to communicate in verbal symbols, empathizing with a lower life-form, if only for a few subjective moments."
"You don't know the meaning of the word 'empathize'!" Roger exclaimed as the figure of the old man began to waver around the edges. "You're talking about fumigating all those people out of existence as if they were so many Drosophila melanogaster!"
"If I don't, the contamination will spread into the other series; in time the entire Filing System will be affected!"
"Then—then why not open the time lock and turn everybody loose?"
"I'm afraid that's impossible. You see, in order to clear up the Rhox infection it will be necessary to also snuff out of existence the locus you call Earth."
"The whole world?" Roger gasped. "You're going to destroy a planet just to keep your filing system tidy?"
"What else would you have me do?"
"All you have to do is stamp out a few Rhox! They're the ones boring holes in the system, not us!"
"Too time-consuming, I'm afraid. It would mean sorting through drawer after drawer." The old man waved a hand at a rank of green-painted file cabinets. "It's much easier to do away with the lot. It's not as though it were in any way important."
"You don't have to annihilate all of them—just the leaders!" Roger protested. "There's one in particular, named Oob, who seems to be the head tuber!"
"Well, then—why not let me go back and attend to that little chore for you? After all, if I succeed it will mean saving the slides, right?"
"It's pointless, my boy. The material has already been adulterated past the point of scientific usefulness."
"It's still useful to us!" Roger came back hotly. "If you don't want the world any more, let us have it!"
"Well—I doubt very much . . . "
"You can at least let me try! If I fail, what do you lose?"
"I suppose you have a point. Very well then, go ahead and have a bash." The old man glanced at Roger critically. "Though you seem rather frail to undertake the task of personally annihilating large numbers of creatures who, insignificant though they may be, enjoy maneuverability in several more spatial dimensions than yourself," he commented.
"Well—what about equipping me with a few tricks to offset that advantage?" Roger suggested.
"Well . . . most superheroes have superstrength, to begin with; and impervious skin, and X-ray vision, and they can fly!"
"Tsk. I'm afraid that would require a great deal more effort than it's worth. Perhaps I'd best just go ahead and bathe that segment of space-time with Q radiation."
"Never mind the superpowers then," Roger said quickly. "How about just giving me, say, a modest cloak of invisibility, flying shoes, and a disintegrator pistol."
The old fellow shook his head regretfully. "All that sort of thing requires the suspension of local natural law—a tiresome business."
"Then just give me a bulletproof vest and a forty-five automatic!"
"Those items wouldn't do you the slightest good, my dear fellow," the old man admonished. "You must rely on subtlety and guile, not mere three-dimensional physical force."
"Then how about a ham sandwich? I'm starving."
"Oh—forgive me! I'm neglecting my hostly duties. I'm a bit rusty, you know. You're the first visitor I've had since—well never mind; the coordinates would be meaningless, I'm afraid." He rose and led Roger through a door and along a path, round the end of a flowering hedge. On a small terrace, a table was laid with white linen and gleaming silver and glass and china. They seated themselves, and Roger lifted the silver cover from a steaming prawn casserole.
"My favorite!" he exclaimed. "Ah—do you eat, Mr. Ucker, you being a machine and all?"
"Certainly, Mr. Tyson. My third-order extrusions walk, talk, think, and do everything but live."
Roger served UKR, then helped himself. As they dined, an unobtrusive string ensemble played plaintive melodies in the background.
"This is pretty nice," Roger said, leaning back in his chair and patting Q'nell's trim little stomach. "Sitting here, it's hard to believe that in a few minutes I'll be starting out unarmed to save the world."
The old man smiled indulgently. "You won't be entirely without resource. I can't assist you with material armaments, but I'll keep in touch with your progress and offer suitable comments from time to time."
"It usually works out that way for me," Roger sighed. "I ask for armor plating, and what do I get? Advice." He rose. "Well, thanks for the chow. I'd better be running along now. If you'll just start me in the right direction . . . "
"Yes." The old man rubbed his hands together. "You know, it's really quite fascinating, being human. I find myself becoming rather interested in the prospect of seeing how far we can get against these Rhox on sheer audacity and impeccable timing."
"I'm kind of interested in that myself," Roger said, feeling Q'nell's heart begin to thump. "And there's no time like the present to find out."
"You're right, my boy," UKR said. He made a quick motion with one finger. The garden faded away, and Roger found himself once more standing in the Rhox control apex.