"Just what do you think you are going to do?"
"See that miniature space ship there? I am going to compress you and your new playmates into this spherical capsule and surround you with a stasis of time. Then I am going to send you on a trip. As soon as you are out of the Galaxy this bar here will throw in a cosmic-energy drive—not using the power of the bar itself, you understand, but only employing its normal radiation of energy to direct and to control the energy of space—and you will depart for scenes unknown with an acceleration equal to the sixth power of the velocity of light. You will travel at that acceleration until this small bar is gone. It will last approximately ninety thousand million years, which, as One will assure you, is but a moment.
"Then these large bars, which will still be big enough to do the work, will rotate your capsule into the fourth dimension. This is desirable, not only to give you additional distance, but also to destroy any orientation you may have remaining, in spite of the stasis of time and the not inconsiderable distance already covered. When and if you get back into three-dimensional space you will be so far away from here that you will certainly need most of what is left of eternity to find your way back here." Then, turning to the ancient physicist of Norlamin: "O.K., Rovol?"
"An exceedingly scholarly bit of work," Rovol applauded.
"It is well done, son," majestic Fodan gravely added. "Not only is it a terrible thing indeed to take away a life, but it is certain that the unknowable force is directing these disembodied mentalities in the engraving upon the sphere of a pattern which must forever remain hidden from our more limited senses."
Seaton thought into the headset for a few seconds, then again projected his mind into the capsule.
"All set to go, folks?" he asked. "Don't take it too hard—no matter how many millions of years the trip lasts, you won't know anything about it. Happy landings!"
The tiny space-ship prison shot away, to transport its contained bodiless intelligences into the indescribable immensities of the super-universe; of the cosmic all; of that ultimately infinite space which can be knowable, if at all, only to such immortal and immaterial, to such incomprehensibly gigantic, mentalities as were theirs.
EPILOGUE