Page:Fantastic Universe (1956-10; vol. 8, no. 3).djvu/79

107 by Eric North


 * They didn't know how much they'd need someone who could tune in with the infinite itself

, Director of Observatory—Earth Space Platform Seven, sat at his desk in the Research Cupola, observing with a whimsical expression the interested faces of the three men opposite him across the high polish of the atomized granite top. The room was shaped something like the three-quarters part of an eggshell, the lower circumference supported on short fluted pillars of green synthetic jade. The rounded arc of the continuous wall was completely bare, save for a large oblong cosmar screen set in part relief immediately in front of the desk. To one side of the screen, was the thin metal arm of the pantagraph that plotted a continuous graph of the activities passing over the glowing inter-stellar background, on an adjacent inwinding belt of white parchment. The belt was automatically fed into a slot in the wall immediately below a red desk marked; Visual Records—I.S.O.7.

"What is gravity?" Graut repeated. "Is it terra pull or cosmic push? Actually, we don't know. As with the electric fluid, we know the

''Dr. Walstab felt that everything so far went to show that the mental and physical worlds were complementary. What happened when an effort was made to track down that unknown essence that lies at the back of the mind that some call the "secret place"? And what happened when Chris Sommers cried for help—straight across space—from a different plane of existence?''

Rh