NOTHING

The little man with the gray beard stared at me and I stared back at him. "This is getting us nowhere," I remarked, "nowhere at all."

He nodded and sat down on the hard stone. We were trapped under the building. The house had come down over us when the bomb landed in the street. The rest of the tenants were probably away or dead. Apparently only the little old man who lived on the second floor rear and I had gotten down to the bomb-proof cellar in time. And now we were trapped.

"We'll have to wait until they dig us out," I said. We couldn't possibly dig our own way out. Too much blocked us in. We were buried beneath tons of brick, rubbish and beams. They were probably busy in the street outside, trying to rescue the people in other, less-damaged buildings. Then again there might be fire, and the noise effectively blocked any chance of their hearing us.

I saw him only by the light of my little pocket flash. That wouldn't last very long. Our space was remarkably limited. This shelter had been a part of the cellar. It had been blocked off and roofed over, but even so, part of it fell in—the part with the supplies and stuff—the part opening on the exit.

"Well," I said, just to say something, "what do we do now? Sit around and wait to die?"

The little old man wrinkled his brow in thought. He didn't seem too worried about dying. I guess when you're his age and have a long gray beard you get reconciled to the prospect. But I was young, and frankly I didn't like the idea at all.

"I think I know a way," the little old man said finally, "but it will seem like madness. Probably it is. It's never been tried. It may never work."

I seized him by the lapels. "Any way is better than none. I'd rather die trying than sitting down moping my life away. Tell it to me."

"You won't laugh? You will take whatever I say seriously?" the little old man asked anxiously.

I saw he didn't want to die the object of scorn, and I saw also that he must have something pretty odd up his sleeve. "No," I answered, "you won't hear a peep out of me."

"Then," said the old man, "if you can prepare yourself, you could walk out through the rocks."

In spite of my promise, I gasped. But then I squelched myself and thought that if I was with a lunatic, I might as well make the most of it. He was now the other half of my universe and so standards had changed. Facing death, any straw will do.

"Proceed," I said. "Explain further."

"Rocks," said the little old man—I guess he must have been a scientist of some sort—"and all other matter are composed of nothing mainly, with a little vibration thrown in."

I kept my mouth shut. I wasn't going to say anything to the contrary even if he claimed black was white.

"Matter," he went on, "is composed entirely of atom. Atoms are broken down to electrons and protons and their kin. They, in turn, appear to be nothing but charges of electricity, charges of energy, not matter. So that all matter is really just a manifestation of energy in a peculiar state of stress."

I waited. This made sense. I began to recognize some of the things I had learned years ago in high school physics.

"Between the vortices of energy which make up the building-blocks of matter, there are comparatively vast stretches of just plain empty space. Within the atom, almost all is vacuum. Between molecules, more vacuum. In a so-called solid mass, it could be demonstrated that less than a quadrillionth part of its mass has any reality and that only in the form of disturbances of energy. And that figure is grossly exaggerated."

I waited. This was still making sense. And anyway, when you are hopelessly trapped there is no sense in being impatient.

"If," went on the professor, "you understand this and project the picture of it in your mind, you can mentally resolve all things into swirls of nothingness, into less than air. If you can do so, you can attain complete control over your own body—for we alone are able to control our own masses by means of will.

"And if you can picture these masses of rock as pools of nothing and yourself as the same, you can pass yourself through these rocks as a whiff of smoke in air. You can revisualize yourself as solid outside this trapping pile."

I thought about it. Wild it was and yet based on real reasoning.

"If you will give your mind to me, let me hypnotize you with your cooperation, I think I can cause that to happen. You will then pass through the rocks and appear outside. Then you will send for me," he said.

I thought that over. "Why don't you do it yourself?" I asked.

"I am old and it is better done with an outside subject. Do not forget that this has never been done."

"Okay. Start," I said, suddenly making up my mind. I didn't want to die and I would do anything, however wild, to avoid it. When one sits alone in darkness beneath a ruined house and knows that there is no hope, a decision like this comes normally.

All is logical according to the conditions given.

I gave him my flashlight and he shone it in my eyes. Then he started weaving it and repeating what he had said about atoms and electrons and masses of nothing.

I watched him fascinated, and I thought of little whirlpools in empty black space. I saw flashing ripples on a void. I saw lone lights untended in nothingness and reflected from nothing. And I saw that they were glowing from nothing. Light, just light.

I saw a solitary mote pursuing an endless track across a vast area that was utter abyss.

Gradually the flashlight seemed to flicker and die. I felt wavy and mistlike. I understood the meaning of matter and I saw indeed that matter has very little real existence.

I felt that I was upon my feet, and they were long columns of imagination having no reality save for endless electric foam.

I felt myself moving forward and I felt other disturbances passing between me and around me and through me.

Then I saw that scenes were passing before my vision and the globules of vacua that were my eyes seemed to register as they passed through other globules of vacua.

I saw what seemed like a tiny planet spinning on its axis, while a strange blue sun shone down and a dozen other planets swirled.

I saw a figure indescribable, mounted upon a thing incredible, pursuing the unknowable across a vast and meaningless place.

I saw dozens of things like this—none of which can be described. Once I saw a large machine with churning arms and it was all bubbly and yet hard and mechanical.

All about me moved a great current and a wave of feelingless substance.

Then I felt a beating of forces upon me, I felt a hammering at me and I felt a pressure pushing upon the whirling, imaginary pools of my being and a curious coldness setting in.

I shivered and looked around. I was naked in the middle of the street; the stars were out and the drone of airplanes audible. People were running up and down and a hose was playing upon the front of a burning building. The wardens were digging in some ruins with crowbars and shovels.

A man came running up to me and threw a blanket over my trembling shoulders.

"Where'd you come from? Bomb blow your clothes off? It happens."

I pointed to the pile of bricks and junk that marked my house.

"There's a man buried in those ruins, but he's alive," I said. "Just trapped. You'll have to dig him out."

The warden blew his whistle and out of the turmoil three other men came with picks and equipment and began to dig.

But it was two days before they finally got to him—and by that time he was dead.