CHAPTER V
THE WORLD IN THE RING
The Chemist paused and relighted his cigar. "Perhaps you have somequestions," he suggested.
The Doctor shifted in his chair.
"Did you have any theory at this time"--he wanted to know--"about thephysical conformation of this world? What I mean is, when you came outof this tunnel were you on the inside or the outside of the world?"
"Was it the same sky you saw overhead when you were in the forest?"asked the Big Business Man.
"No, it was what he saw in the microscope, wasn't it?" said the VeryYoung Man.
"One at a time, gentlemen," laughed the Chemist. "No, I had noparticular theory at this time--I had too many other things to think of.But I do remember noticing one thing which gave me the clew to a fairlycomplete understanding of this universe. From it I formed a definiteexplanation, which I found was the belief held by the peoplethemselves."
"What was that?" asked the Very Young Man.
"I noticed, as I stood looking over this broad expanse of country beforeme, one vital thing that made it different from any similar scene I hadever beheld. If you will stop and think a moment, gentlemen, you willrealize that in our world here the horizon is caused by a curvature ofthe earth below the straight line of vision. We are on a convex surface.But as I gazed over this landscape, and even with no appreciable lightfrom the sky I could see a distance of several miles, I saw at once thatquite the reverse was true. I seemed to be standing in the center of avast shallow bowl. The ground curved upward into the distance. There wasno distant horizon line, only the gradual fading into shadow of thevisual landscape. I was standing obviously on a concave surface, on theinside, not the outside of the world.
"The situation, as I now understand it, was this: According to thesmallest stature I reached, and calling my height at that time roughlysix feet, I had descended into the ring at the time I met Lylda severalthousand miles, at least. By the way, where is the ring?"
"Here is it," said the Very Young Man, handing it to him. The Chemistreplaced it on his finger. "It's pretty important to me now," he said,smiling.
"You bet!" agreed the Very Young Man.
"You can readily understand how I descended such a distance, if youconsider the comparative immensity of my stature during the first fewhours I was in the ring. It is my understanding that this countrythrough which I passed is a barren waste--merely the atoms of themineral we call gold.
"Beyond that I entered the hitherto unexplored regions within the atom.The country at that point where I found the forest, I was told later, ishabitable for several hundred miles. Around it on all sides lies adesert, across which no one has ever penetrated.
"This surface is the outside of the Oroid world, for so they call theirearth. At this point the shell between the outer and inner surface isonly a few miles in thickness. The two surfaces do not parallel eachother here, so that in descending these tunnels we turned hardly morethan an eighth of a complete circle.
"At the city of Arite, where Lylda first took me, and where I had myfirst view of the inner surface, the curvature is slightly greater thanthat of our own earth, although, as I have said, in the oppositedirection."
"And the space within this curvature--the heavens you havementioned--how great do you estimate it to be?" asked the Doctor.
"Based on the curvature at Arite it would be about six thousand miles indiameter."
"Has this entire inner surface been explored?" asked the Big BusinessMan.
"No, only a small portion. The Oroids are not an adventurous people.There are only two nations, less than twelve million people alltogether, on a surface nearly as extensive as our own."
"How about those stars?" suggested the Very Young Man.
"I believe they comprise a complete universe similar to our own solarsystem. There is a central sun-star, around which many of the othersrevolve. You must understand, though, that these other worlds areinfinitely tiny compared to the Oroids, and, if inhabited, supportbeings nearly as much smaller than the Oroids, as they are smaller thanyou."
"Great Caesar!" ejaculated the Banker. "Don't let's go into that anydeeper!"
"Tell us more about Lylda," prompted the Very Young Man.
"You are insatiable on that point," laughed the Chemist. "Well, when weleft the sleigh, Lylda took me directly into the city of Arite. I foundit an orderly collection of low houses, seemingly built of uniformlycut, highly polished gray blocks. As we passed through the streets, someof which were paved with similar blocks, I was reminded of nothing somuch as the old jingles of Spotless Town. Everything was immaculately,inordinately clean. Indeed, the whole city seemed built of some curiousform of opaque glass, newly scrubbed and polished.
"Children crowded from the doorways as we advanced, but Lylda dispersedthem with a gentle though firm, command. As we approached the sort ofcastle I have mentioned, the reason for Lylda's authoritative mannerdawned upon me. She was, I soon learned, daughter of one of the mostlearned men of the nation and was--handmaiden, do you call it?--to thequeen."
"So it was a monarchy?" interrupted the Big Business Man. "I shouldnever have thought that."
"Lylda called their leader a king. In reality he was the president,chosen by the people, for a period of about what we would term twentyyears; I learned something about this republic during my stay, but notas much as I would have liked. Politics was not Lylda's strong point,and I had to get it all from her, you know.
"For several days I was housed royally in the castle. Food was served meby an attendant who evidently was assigned solely to look after myneeds. At first I was terribly confused by the constant, uniform light,but when I found certain hours set aside for sleep, just as we havethem, when I began to eat regularly, I soon fell into the routine ofthis new life.
"The food was not greatly different from our own, although I found not asingle article I could identify. It consisted principally of vegetablesand fruits, the latter of an apparently inexhaustible variety.
"Lylda visited me at intervals, and I learned I was awaiting an audiencewith the king. During these days she made rapid progress with mylanguage--so rapid that I shortly gave up the idea of mastering hers.
"And now, with the growing intimacy between us and our ability tocommunicate more readily, I learned the simple, tragic story of herrace--new details, of course, but the old, old tale of might againstright, and the tragedy of a trusting, kindly people, blindly thinkingothers as just as themselves.
"For thousands of years, since the master life-giver had come from oneof the stars to populate the world, the Oroid nation had dwelt in peaceand security. These people cared nothing for adventure. No restlessthirst for knowledge led them to explore deeply the limitless landsurrounding them. Even from the earliest times no struggle forexistence, no doctrine of the survival of the fittest, hung over them aswith us. No wild animals harassed them; no savages menaced them. Afertile boundless land, a perfect climate, nurtured them tenderly.
"Under such conditions they developed only the softer, gentler qualitiesof nature. Many laws among them were unnecessary, for life was sosimple, so pleasant to live, and the attainment of all the commonlyaccepted standards of wealth so easy, that the incentive to wrongdoingwas almost non-existent.
"Strangely enough, and fortunately, too, no individuals rose among themwith the desire for power. Those in command were respected and loved astrue workers for the people, and they accepted their authority in thesame spirit with which it was given. Indolence, in its highest sense thewonderful art of doing nothing gracefully, played the greatest part intheir life.
"Then, after centuries of ease and peaceful security, came theawakening. Almost without warning another nation had come out of theunknown to attack them.
"With the hurt feeling that comes to a child unjustly treated, they allbut succumbed to this first onslaught. The abduction of numbers of theirwomen, for such seemed the principal purpose of the invaders, arousedthem sufficiently to repel this first crude attack. Their
manhoodchallenged, their anger as a nation awakened for the first time, theysprang as one man into the horror we call war.
"With the defeat of the Malites came another period of ease andsecurity. They had learned no lesson, but went their indolent way,playing through life like the kindly children they were. During thislast period some intercourse between them and the Malites took place.The latter people, whose origin was probably nearly opposite them on theinner surface, had by degrees pushed their frontiers closer and closerto the Oroids. Trade between the two was carried on to some extent, butthe character of the Malites, their instinctive desire for power, forits own sake, their consideration for themselves as superior beings,caused them to be distrusted and feared by their more simple-mindedcompanion nation.
"You can almost guess the rest, gentlemen. Lylda told me little aboutthe Malites, but the loathing disgust of her manner, her hesitancy, evento bring herself to mention them, spoke more eloquently than words.
"Four years ago, as they measure time, came the second attack, and now,in a huge arc, only a few hundred miles from Arite, hung the opposingarmies."
The Chemist paused. "That's the condition I found, gentlemen," he said."Not a strikingly original or unfamiliar situation, was it?"
"By Jove!" remarked the Doctor thoughtfully, "what a curious thing thatthe environment of our earth should so affect that world inside thering. It does make you stop and think, doesn't it, to realize how thoseinfinitesimal creatures are actuated now by the identical motives thatinspire us?"
"Yet it does seem very reasonable, I should say," the Big Business Manput in.
"Let's have another round of drinks," suggested the Banker--"this is drywork!"
"As a scientist you'd make a magnificent plumber, George!" retorted theBig Business Man. "You're about as helpful in this little gathering asan oyster!"
The Very Young Man rang for a waiter.
"I've been thinking----" began the Banker, and stopped at the smile ofhis companion. "Shut up!"--he finished--"that's cheap wit, you know!"
"Go on, George," encouraged the other, "you've been thinking----"
"I've been tremendously interested in this extraordinary story"--headdressed himself to the Chemist--"but there's one point I don't get atall. How many days were you in that ring do you make out?"
"I believe about seven, all told," returned the Chemist.
"But you were only away from us some forty hours. I ought to know, I'vebeen right here." He looked at his crumpled clothes somewhat ruefully.
"The change of time-progress was one of the surprises of my adventure,"said the Chemist. "It is easily explained in a general way, although Icannot even attempt a scientific theory of its cause. But I must confessthat before I started the possibility of such a thing never evenoccurred to me."
"To get a conception of this change you must analyze definitely whattime is. We measure and mark it by years, months, and so forth, down tominutes and seconds, all based upon the movements of our earth aroundits sun. But that is the measurement of time, not time itself. How wouldyou describe time?"
The Big Business Man smiled. "Time," he said, "is what keeps everythingfrom happening at once."
"Very clever," laughed the Chemist.
The Doctor leaned forward earnestly. "I should say," he began, "thattime is the rate at which we live--the speed at which we successivelypass through our existence from birth to death. It's very hard to putintelligibly, but I think I know what I mean," he finished somewhatlamely.
"Exactly so. Time is a rate of life-progress, different for everyindividual and only made standard because we take the time-duration ofthe earth's revolution around the sun, which is constant, andarbitrarily say: 'That is thirty-one million five hundred thousand oddseconds.'"
"Is time different for every individual?" asked the Bankerargumentatively.
"Think a moment," returned the Chemist. "Suppose your brain were to worktwice as fast as mine. Suppose your heart beat twice as fast, and allthe functions of your body were accelerated in a like manner. What wecall a second would certainly seem to you twice as long. Further thanthat, it actually would be twice as long, so far as you were concerned.Your digestion, instead of taking perhaps four hours, would take two.You would eat twice as often. The desire for sleep would overtake youevery twelve hours instead of twenty-four, and you would be satisfiedwith four hours of unconsciousness instead of eight. In short, you wouldsoon be living a cycle of two days every twenty-four hours. Time then,as we measure it, for you at least would have doubled--you would beprogressing through life at twice the rate that I am through mine."
"That may be theoretically true," the Big Business Man put in."Practically, though, it has never happened to any one."
"Of course not, to such a great degree as the instance I put. No one,except in disease, has ever doubled our average rate of life-progress,and lived it out as a balanced, otherwise normal existence. But there isno question that to some much smaller degree we all of us differ onefrom the other. The difference, however, is so comparatively slight,that we can each one reconcile it to the standard measurement of time.And so, outwardly, time is the same for all of us. But inwardly, why, wenone of us conceive a minute or an hour to be the same! How do you knowhow long a minute is to me? More than that, time is not constant even inthe same individual. How many hours are shorter to you than others? Howmany days have been almost interminable? No, instead of being constant,there is nothing more inconstant than time."
"Haven't you confused two different issues?" suggested the Big BusinessMan. "Granted what you say about the slightly different rate at whichdifferent individuals live, isn't it quite another thing, how long timeseems to you. A day when you have nothing to do seems long, or, on theother hand, if you are very busy it seems short. But mind, it only_seems_ short or long, according to the preoccupation of your mind. Thathas nothing to do with the speed of your progress through life."
"Ah, but I think it has," cried the Chemist. "You forget that we none ofus have all of the one thing to the exclusion of the other. Time seemsshort; it seems long, and in the end it all averages up, and makes ourrate of progress what it is. Now if any of us were to go through life ina calm, deliberate way, making time seem as long as possible, he wouldlive more years, as we measure them, than if he rushed headlong throughthe days, accomplishing always as much as possible. I mean in neithercase to go to the extremes, but only so far as would be consistent withthe maintenance of a normal standard of health. How about it?" He turnedto the Doctor. "You ought to have an opinion on that."
"I rather think you are right," said the latter thoughtfully, "althoughI doubt very much if the man who took it easy would do as much duringhis longer life as the other with his energy would accomplish in thelesser time allotted to him."
"Probably he wouldn't," smiled the Chemist; "but that does not alter thepoint we are discussing."
"How does this apply to the world in the ring?" ventured the Very YoungMan.
"I believe there is a very close relationship between the dimensions oflength, breadth, and thickness, and time. Just what connection with themit has, I have no idea. Yet, when size changes, time-rate changes; youhave only to look at our own universe to discover that."
"How do you mean?" asked the Very Young Man.
"Why, all life on our earth, in a general way, illustrates thefundamental fact that the larger a thing is, the slower itstime-progress is. An elephant, for example, lives more years than wehumans. Yet how quickly a fly is born, matured, and aged! There areexceptions, of course; but in a majority of cases it is true.
"So I believe that as I diminished in stature, my time-progress becamefaster and faster. I am seven days older than when I left you day beforeyesterday. I have lived those seven days, gentlemen, there is no gettingaround that fact."
"This is all tremendously interesting," sighed the Big Business Man;"but not very comprehensible."