And in the instant of inerting, the visiplate into which the two men stared went blank. The thousands of stars studding the sky a moment before had disappeared as though they had never been.
"Why.... What.... How in all the yellow hells of space can that happen?" Kinnison blurted.
Without a word, Cardynge reached out and snapped the plate's receiver over from "visual" to "ultra," whereupon the stars reappeared as suddenly as they had vanished.
"Something's screwy somewhere!" the Lensman protested. "We can't have an inert velocity greater than that of light—it's impossible!"
"Few things, if any, can be said definitely to be impossible; and everything is relative, not absolute," the old scientist declared, pompously. "This space, for instance. You have not yet perceived, I see, even that you are not in the same three-dimensional space in which we have heretofore existed."
Kinnison gulped. He was going to protest about that, too, but in the face of Cardynge's unperturbed acceptance of the fact he did not quite dare to say what he had in mind.
"That is better," the old man declaimed. "Do not get excited—to do so dulls the mind. Take nothing for granted, do not jump at conclusions—to commit either of those errors will operate powerfully against success. Working hypotheses, young man, must be based upon accurately determined facts; not upon mere guesses, superstitions, or the figments of personal prejudices."
"Bub-bub-but ... QX—skip it!" Nine-tenths of the Dauntless' crew would have gone out of control at the impact of the knowledge of what had happened; even Kinnison's powerful mind was shaken. Cardynge, however, was—not seemed to be, but actually was—as calm and as self-contained as though he were in his own quiet study. "Explain it to me, will you please, in words of as nearly one syllable as possible?"
"Our looser thinkers have for centuries speculated upon the possibility of an entire series of different spaces existing simultaneously, side by side in a hypothetical hypercontinuum. I have never indulged in such time-wasting; but now that actual corroborative data have become available, I regard it as a highly fruitful field of investigation. Two extremely significant facts have already become apparent; the variability of time and the non-applicability of our so-called 'laws' of motion. Different spaces, different laws, it would seem."
"But when we cut our generators in that other tube we emerged into our own space," Kinnison argued. "How do you account for that?"