Alan E. Nourse -- The Universe Between

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The Universe Between

Alan E. Nourse

Portions of this book were originally published, in different form, in Astounding Science

Fiction (now Analog Science Fact and Fiction) in stories entitled "High Threshold" and

was published with additional material in 1967 as a Paperback Library Edition.

To John W. Campbell, Jr. in appreciation

Part One

The Door Into Nowhere

—1—

They cut the current the instant the trouble began, switched off the main pumps and broke

into the vault. Half-dragging the man from the chamber, they tried to slap him into silence as

he screamed, cowering and shrieking and covering his face with both hands. Finally a

sedative shot quelled the original attack; the man just sat blubbering in a chair, staring at

nothing, his whole body shaking violently. Then, like the others, he took a sudden breath and

sagged forward. The doctor from the Hoffman Center caught him and eased him down to

the floor. They had the resuscitator and heart-stimulator at hand, of course, but it was no

good. Five minutes later the man's pulse and blood pressure were gone. He was dead.

Dr. John McEvoy twisted the small round object from his clenched fist and examined it

under the arc light: an eight-centimeter ball of rubber, slick and smooth on the outside. With

a pocket knife McEvoy sliced through the outer covering of the ball to reveal the fuzzy down

that lined the hollow interior. Angrily, he tossed the ball to the technician. "There's your tennis

ball," he said.

The doctor was examining the man's body as the rest of the lab crew clustered about.

He looked up at McEvoy and spread his hands. "The same as the other two," he said

hopelessly. "No marks, no nothing. And the post-mortem won't tell us anything more. Total

cardiovascular collapse, with cardiac arrest. Maybe adrenal exhaustion, though I don't see

how a psychic trauma could get to the endocrine function so fast."

"Oh, come on, Doc," McEvoy snapped. "Translate it."

"The man died of fear. Or shock. Or both."

McEvoy clenched a heavy fist. "Same wretched thing again, then." He turned away,

slamming the fist into his other hand. As director of this whole branch of research in the

sprawling Telcom Laboratories, John McEvoy had been trapped in the middle from the

beginning. It was his responsibility, even though some of the bright-eyed boys on his staff

had actually started the thing. He turned to his assistant. "Well, what about it? Where do we

go next?"

The technician tossed the peculiar tennis ball into the air a time or two, staring at the

body on the floor. "Well, one thing is certain. We can't go on like this."

"Obviously not," McEvoy said. "But we've got to go on somehow. We can't let this thing

slide by. It's right in front of us—right at our fingertips! And we can't seem to touch it. Can't

even get near it. But we can't quit now, just because…"

"Just because everybody dies?" The man met McEvoy's eyes. "That's what you're really

saying, you know. And you're the one who talked that poor guy into it. 'Nothing to worry

about, we've got the bugs out of it this time,' you said. Good old McEvoy, always the

persuader. So now he's dead. How would you like to go in there next time?"

"Not I," said McEvoy, glancing quickly away from the body on the floor. "Not after that,

not I."

—2—

"The fact remains, Dr. McEvoy, that you're going to have to close it down." The little man with

the red face tamped his pipe and applied a match to it. Across the small office room pale

afternoon sunlight was filtering in the window. McEvoy felt as bleak as the South Jersey

barrens he could see outside. The little man with the pipe stared at him and the Hoffman

Center doctor from behind the wide desk. He didn't look like much, this little man, but he was

power—the final word at Telcom Laboratories, the co-ordinator of all the research projects

under way in this whole great communications-equipment organization. What this little man

decided was what was going to happen; McEvoy knew that. "We just can't have any more

accidents of this sort on that project," the little man went on quietly. "Telcom has given you

free sanction in your work here so far; we don't believe in hiring good men and then

handcuffing them. But if you don't clamp down on this now, we will. Already we have a

committee of the International Joint Conference on our necks. Did you know that I've spent

all day on the Washington line beating off bureaucrats who want to know what on earth

you're doing up here that's taken three lives already and put two other good men into a

Hoffman Center lock-ward for the mentally deranged? Next thing, we'll be facing a

full-fledged government inquiry, with an injunction slapped on everything we're doing here,

and Telcom Laboratories doesn't care to have that happen." The red-faced co-ordinator

paused. "To say nothing of the moral questions involved."

McEvoy was silent for a moment. The three of them had been hashing it out for over an

hour; now McEvoy was tired, more tired than he could ever remember. Finally he spread his

hands. "Sir, I've considered all these points very carefully, and I've come to some definite

conclusions. I'd like at least to present them."

"Conclusions! Dr. McEvoy, the record shows that since you started this thing back on—"

he glanced at a note sheet—"on November 3, 1978, that's just two months ago, you've killed

or incapacitated five of the best investigators Telcom had on the payroll, and you have

nothing, absolutely nothing, in the way of a solution to offer. Those men would better be alive

and working. The only definite conclusion I can reach is that you're fooling with something

you can't manage, and I think the time has come to stop you."

McEvoy squirmed. "I can't deny the record. And I wouldn't care to be the next man,

either. But we do have a solution to offer." He motioned to the man from the Hoffman

Medical Center. "Tell him what we talked about this morning, Doc."

The doctor shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. "We've been in close contact with Dr.

McEvoy ever since he got involved in this…this business," he said carefully. "Particularly

when abnormal behavior patterns began to develop among the investigators. As you know,

the Hoffman Center is acutely interested in problems of human behavior, adaptability,

adjustment…normal or abnormal. In fact, we have a very promising young psychologist

named Benedict who is working right now with a team of high-adaptive youngsters, trying to

learn more about mental adaptation to physical and emotional stress—"

"Yes, yes," the co-ordinator broke in impatiently. "Telcom has worked with your people

on any number of projects, I know that. After all, communication involves people as well as

electrons."

"Yes, sir. Well, we think we may have a lead to Dr. McEvoy's problem. At least a way to

go about investigating it without any more tragedies. There's a pattern to what has

happened, and it makes sense. In each case a man has gone into the vault after the…the

cube, or whatever it is…has materialized. In each case the man was alone, and instructed

as well as possible in techniques of observation. Since we aren't entirely sure just what

we're dealing with, it's been hard to tell a man exactly what to look for, you understand. Each

one was instructed to observe the phenomenon any way he could." The doctor shrugged.

"You know the results."

"Yes," the co-ordinator said. "Deranged minds and dead men."

"The question is why," the doctor went on. "Each of these men was a perfectly ordinary

lab person picked at random, trained in physics or electronics but not much else. We think

now we're dealing mainly with a problem of adjustment—mental adjustment. These men

apparently have been faced with something they have never encountered before, something

so completely foreign to their experience that their nervous systems couldn't cope with it.

They ran into something so frightening, or startling, or stupendous that their minds saw no

escape but total and immediate breakdown. And in three cases the shock brought on

physical collapse as well. It was a matter of adjust or crumble. They couldn't adjust, so they

crumbled."

The co-ordinator blinked at the doctor. "The theory sounds reasonable enough. I'm no

physician, I have to take your word. But what do you suggest, gentlemen? That we just keep

feeding good men to this thing?"

Dr. John McEvoy stirred. "Not quite," he said. "Believe me, I don't want any more bodies

in the laboratory. But as the doctor says, it may be a matter of adjustment. He claims this

man Benedict has proven that people differ greatly in what they can adjust to mentally. He

has taken some natural high-adaptives, tested them stage by stage to find the most

adaptable ones, and has been training them to adapt even better…right, Doc? What we

need is a man with a high adjustment threshold. A very high threshold. Somebody with a

cast-iron nervous system who can adapt to anything, regardless of how strange or shocking

it may be. And if I could find a man like that, I'd agree to one more stab at it."

The coordinator knocked out his pipe and looked from McEvoy to the Hoffman Center

man and back. "In other words, what you're saying is that somebody who is specially skilled

and gifted at adapting to strange situations might—just might be able to investigate where

the others have failed."

"Exactly," John McEvoy said.

"But there are no guarantees of that."

"None," McEvoy said flatly.

For a long time the co-ordinator stared out the window at the gloomy countryside. He

filled his pipe again, lit it, put it down, picked it up and puffed on it. "John," he said finally,

"I've known you and your work for a long time. You're a big man and a tough one; when you

get onto something you don't like to let it go. But I've always counted on your judgment. Do

you really think that this thing is so important?"

"It's something no scientist in history has ever encountered before," McEvoy said. "It's

important."

"And if this new approach of yours fails, you'd drop it?"

The big man hesitated just an instant. "I'd drop it, yes. Until I could find some better way

to define it, or something. Yes, I'd close it down."

There was another moment of silence. Then the coordinator nodded. "Very well, John. If

you can find the kind of investigator you've described, I'll accept your word that you'll stop if

he fails. Even though I don't believe you for a moment."

—3—

John McEvoy took the ball from his briefcase and laid it on the desk before the young man

with the tired eyes and the horn-rimmed glasses. "What does that look like to you, Dr.

Benedict?"

The young man shook his head impatiently. "Not 'Doctor,' please. Around here that

means either an M.D. or a psychiatrist. I'm neither; just a research phychologist." Ed

Benedict picked up the ball, examined it closely. Young, thin, obviously intent, he gave

McEvoy none of the impression of eager, inexperienced blundering he so often felt with the

young mathematicians and physicists coming into his laboratory from their training. So often

they thought they had the world by the tail, knew all there was to know and had only to

convince everyone else of that simple fact. By contrast, Ed Benedict had a curious manner

of reserve about him that McEvoy couldn't quite pin down. Not exactly caution; certainly not

hesitation, not fear—maybe wisdom was the right word. A young man, but with a wisdom

beyond his years—a wisdom born of experience.

Benedict studied the ball, put a finger into the notch that McEvoy had cut, and looked up,

frowning. "It looks to me like a tennis ball somebody turned inside out."

McEvoy nodded. "Right. And how would you go about turning a tennis ball inside out?"

"I don't think I could, without cutting a hole in it to turn it inside out through." The

psychologist tossed the ball back onto the desk. "Which, I gather, you did not do. What can I

do for you, Dr. McEvoy?"

"You've talked to the Center man who was in my lab yesterday?"

"Yes. But I'm afraid he was pretty vague about the details. He couldn't even say just what

this project is that you're working on."

"Neither can I, for sure," McEvoy said. "About two months ago we ran into a peculiar

snag in the work we were doing. You know the background: the Mars and Asteroid landings

a few years ago, and all the stir about the iron lode they found on Mars, what with the pinch

on steel we've been feeling lately. And you've read about the Joint Conference contracts for

various kinds of spacecraft, and the trouble with the guidance components on long-range

ships because of prolonged low temperature conditions."

Ed Benedict smiled faintly. "I know there's been enough government-supported

research in communications equipment to quadruple the value of Telcom stocks in the last

five years. Go on."

"Okay, we've had more work than we knew what to do with," McEvoy said. "My lab has

been involved with temperature stresses on spacecraft components, especially the effects

of extreme cold on guidance systems. We've been working in extremely low temperatures,

approaching absolute zero, where molecular motion ceases altogether. A theoretical point,

of course, because you're never supposed to be quite able to get there. You get into

problems of entropy and energy exchange…actual physical stress…that gets worse the

closer you get to the theoretical point. Mass-energy conversion, a lot of otherwise-stable

constants that don't seem to obtain under these conditions…the very meat of the project, the

reason we're doing it."

Ed Benedict nodded. "I don't understand you, but I think I know what you're talking

about."

"Fine. Things were going along very well until one of my men devised a radically new

refrigerating pump that worked far better than anybody dreamed it could. We got our test

material—a block of tungsten supported on an insulated tripod in the refrigerating

vault—down closer to absolute zero than we'd ever hoped for. Maybe we hit absolute and

dropped below it…I don't even know that for sure."

The phychologist blinked. "I don't follow. From absolute zero, just where can the

temperature drop to?"

"A good question," McEvoy said. "I can't answer it. Below absolute zero you might

speculate on some kind of negative molecular motion. Maybe that's what we did get.

Certainly something changed. The test block simply evaporated. Vanished. The tripod

vanished, and so did the temperature-recording device. All we could see in the vault was a

small, glowing hole in the center of the room where the block had been. Nothing in it,

nothing. Just a pale, blue, glowing area about six inches across that looked to some of us

very strangely like a hypercube."

"A hypercube?"

"A three-dimensional picture of a four-dimensional object; just as you can draw a picture

of a cube in perspective on a flat two-dimensional surface like a piece of paper. It looks like

a cube when you look at it, but it doesn't actually have any depth. This glowing area was in

three dimensions—cubical—but the lines were distorted as if there were more than one

cube in the same space. In fact, it looked very suspiciously like a four-dimensional hole in

our three-dimensional space, as if the energy we had been applying had inadvertently cut

through a corner or an edge of some…some other universe constructed in four spatial

dimensions instead of three."

Ed Benedict was silent for a moment, staring at the tennis ball. "So you investigated,"

he said finally.

"We investigated…and you know from the doctor what happened."

"What about this?" Benedict pointed to the ball.

"That's one of the characteristics of this thing we are able to investigate. That was an

ordinary, normal tennis ball until we dropped it into the area of this hypercube. It came out

the other side looking like this. I stuck a pencil into the area and it came out with a thin layer

of graphite around a solid wooden core. A light bulb we pushed in just exploded and

vaporized."

Benedict toyed with the tennis ball. "And your investigators haven't even been able to

look into this little area of space?"

"No. When they've tried it, it's frightened them, or shocked them, or done something to

them. As if they had taken on some kind of terrible overload, beyond their ability to adjust."

"It sounds as if you need a tough nervous system," Ed Benedict said. "Somebody tough

enough to look in there and investigate and at least come out alive." He smiled. "Have you

heard the old story about the South American farmers who tried to carry their goats over the

Andes by muleback? The mules crossed the high passes and the narrow mountain trails

along dreadful drop-offs just fine. But the goats all died of fright. It was old stuff for the mules,

or else they were too stupid to be worried, but the goats couldn't take it. Until they were

blindfolded. Then everything went fine."

Ed Benedict stood up, walked to the window and stared out across the growing jumble

of buildings of the newly established Hoffman Medical Center. A high-riser was just now

about halfway finished, its girders bare to the wind. A sign announced it as the Center's

future Administration Building and Main Evaluation Clinic.

"Do you have any idea of the kind of work we've been doing in my laboratory, Dr.

McEvoy?"

"Vaguely."

"Patterns of adjustment. Given a new or altered environment, one man can adjust and

survive while another breaks down and withdraws to avoid facing new circumstances. We're

trying to find out why. Young people usually adjust far more readily than adults. We're trying

to learn why. What is the mind's mechanism of adjustment? How does it work? How can

someone change his thinking to cope with a new environment? Why can one person adjust

and another not? That's what we've been working on."

"And your results?"

Benedict shrugged. "We keep learning as we go. Confront a man with a sudden, radical

change in the world around him and he has to do something—adjust or withdraw. His mind

is full of things that he's learned to help him stay alive in his old familiar environment. In the

new environment he gets the wrong answers; the data in his mind is no good. So he can do

one of two things. He can try to get by on the wrong-answer data, and end up with anything

from a mild nervous breakdown to frank derangement, depending on how badly the new

environment threatens him. Or—which amounts to the same thing—he can devote himself to

wrenching the environment back to the old familiar pattern; okay if it works except that it

seldom does and he just ends up frustrated as well.

"Alternatively, a man can recognize that his mental data is wrong, chuck it out as 'no

good under these circumstances' and proceed to search for new data that is good. Of

course, he has to relate what he can understand to what he can't and use that for a starting

place—sometimes a very tough job. But if he can do it, eventually he can adjust. Some

people are just naturally good at it. They adjust readily, especially when they've had some

training and practice. Others stumble, get wrong answers to begin with, end up with even

more dangerously wrong answers, and get so confused and frightened that their minds just

block the whole thing off and adjustment becomes impossible."

McEvoy nodded. "But it all depends on having something understandable to hang onto.

And you're talking about environments that are only partly different, say an ice station in

Antarctica, or an exploratory post on the Moon. What would happen if one of these

high-adaptive people were suddenly faced with an environment so completely foreign and

incomprehensible that there was nothing he could relate to the world he knew before? No

place to stand. What would he do then?"

Ed Benedict took the tennis ball from the desk and studied it for several moments

before answering. Then he looked up at McEvoy. "I don't know. I don't think I'd want to be

responsible."

McEvoy's face fell. "You mean you think there's be no chance of success?"

"Oh, I didn't say that. Take someone with a very high degree of adaptability, someone

with a keen mind and plenty of resourcefulness, and he might find something to work with in

such an incomprehensible environment. You'd be amazed at the overload a human nervous

system can take without cracking. We've tried everything we could devise on some of these

youngsters. Ever try living on a forty-hour day? It's an experience. Varied temperatures,

disorientation, persistently irritating noise effects, distorted spacial environments like

tilt-houses and such, induced successive dilemmas—everything. We've weeded out dozens

of high-adaptives; when one threatens to crack we pull him back, let him get his feet on the

ground, and then get him to help us devise new tests for the others. And some don't crack."

"We need someone like that," McEvoy said. "But I can't go sending a child into that

vault."

"Of course not. The one I'm thinking of is seventeen years old, and decidedly not a child.

Just about the most perfectly adaptable human being I've ever worked with. Fully

cooperative, intelligent…possibly just the one you need." The psychologist paused, looked

intently at McEvoy. "Possibly. I think I would have to counsel against it, but I couldn't say yes

or no. Nobody has the right to make that kind of decision for another person."

"I know, I know." McEvoy nodded excitedly. "But do you think he might be willing to try

this with us?"

Ed Benedict smiled. "She might. Why don't you ask her and find out?"

—4—

Gail Talbot disliked John McEvoy from the first moment she set eyes on him. For one thing,

he was positively ancient—forty years old at least, and therefore utterly uninteresting to a

lively girl of seventeen who regarded anyone over twenty-eight as practically in the grave.

But there was more to it than that. There was a violent, ruthless intensity about this man

that scraped her nerves. She had encountered this type before: the raw, unyielding,

hard-driving and ambitious ones. Everything went fine, just as long as you agreed with them,

but cross them just once, and whammo! She knew. Her father had been like that—just one

of the twenty-odd reasons she had spent about half her time in juvenile court during the last

four years, until somebody at the Hoffman Center had checked out her psych-testing scores

and noticed the staggering discrepancy between her social performance and her actual

intellectual potential.

The judge had been glad enough to get rid of her, especially after Ed Benedict had

practically guaranteed that the way things were going the court was soon going to have a

highly intelligent, belligerent and incorrigibly anti-social young lady on its hands—and she

had been ordered to Hoffman Center custody. Her father had been glad to get rid of her,

too; he was already bone-weary of the court appearances, the fines and warnings, the

rebellion and anger and night-long battles that always started out as "reasonable

discussions" and ended up screaming fights. And as for her mother…Gail blocked on that

one and turned her blue eyes to McEvoy. At least McEvoy was sober.

He was telling her eagerly about something he wanted her to investigate—a

"phenomenon," he kept calling it—and she was confused and bored, but she listened. She

yawned, and nodded cleverly in all the right places, and pushed her black hair down into

place behind her right ear, a nervous habit that was a red flag to Ed Benedict but of which

she was only dimly aware. "This cube isn't like anything you've ever seen before," McEvoy

was saying. "And you could have trouble, because it might affect you in some completely

unforeseen way. It just hangs there in space all by itself, and glows a little. We think it may be

a three-dimensional slice through a fourth dimension, and so far nobody has even been able

to look at it without getting badly shaken up or killed."

Gail stared at him in disbelief. "You mean you just want me to go into a room and look

into a box or something?"

"Well…yes," McEvoy said lamely.

"And tell you what I see inside? Is that all?"

"That's right. I mean, no! I mean, it may not be all that simple…" McEvoy floundered,

thrown completely off balance now by this quiet, black-haired girl who was watching him with

a slightly malicious gleam in her clear blue eyes. "I mean, it may require more than you

expect, but we need somebody to look at it—"

"Why bother?" Gail cut him off flatly.

"Because there's something there we don't understand." McEvoy was getting angry and

raising his voice. "Because we have to know what it is."

"That's fine for you and your physicists. But what's in it for me?"

"Maybe nothing. Nothing but helping to investigate something that somebody has to

investigate. Maybe nothing but having a part in a really major discovery."

"Maybe nothing but having my brains jogged loose," Gail said. "So why me?"

"Because you may be the only person in the world who can do it," McEvoy roared in

exasperation. "One more disaster and we're finished. All through! We'll have to close it

down."

The girl studied him. Bored or not, she was not stupid. She had heard everything

McEvoy had been saying about this project; he had been fair, which was good because

there was nothing she hated worse than a liar, and she understood the danger perfectly. Of

course, she had been warned in advance, as well. Ed Benedict had urged her to stay away

from McEvoy and his project; he'd practically begged her to say no. Now McEvoy reminded

her strangely of Ed…some of the same intensity of purpose, the same contagious aura of

excitement. Of course, there was no comparison, really; nobody was quite like Ed Benedict,

and her feelings toward him always made her feel goopy and confused. Yet oddly enough

she knew she wanted to say yes to McEvoy now just precisely because Ed Benedict had

begged her to say no. After all, he didn't own her.

"All right," she said. "When do we start?"

"Start! Well…right now. I mean, as soon as we can get you briefed." Once again

McEvoy was off balance; the resistance had crumbled too easily. "But you have to

understand that this little 'box' you're going to look at may be dangerous. It may affect you

very strangely."

Gail Talbot sighed. "Mister, after all the garbage I've had thrown at me in the past four

years, I think I could take anything. You name it."

McEvoy eyed her sourly for a minute. "Yes," he finally agreed. "I think you probably

could."

—5—

It was cold in the vault, and very dark. As the door clanged shut behind her she paused,

waiting for her eyes to adjust to the glow emanating from the center of the room. She stood

shivering in the dead silence of the place, and for the first time in her seventeen years Gail

Talbot realized that she was afraid.

She knew that in a way she wasn't really alone in there. Outside the vault a dozen

people were watching every move she made through thick, insulated panels of oneway

glass. McEvoy sat at the main power switch, clenching the intercom microphone in his hand.

Ed Benedict was there, too, still furious that his last-minute attempt to talk her out of it had

failed. Poor, good-hearted Ed, who had tried so hard to be fair, and then when the chips

were down practically fell over himself trying to make her decision for her! And all the others:

the Hoffman Center medical team, half a dozen engineers and technicians from McEvoy's

staff, help available at any instant if she needed it.

Yet for all that, she knew that it was really she and she alone who was standing in this

dark, cold room. All the help in the world might not be enough, if she needed it. There was

danger here, and she had to face it alone. It was too late now to turn back. Others had tried

and failed, but they had had no preparation at all. Now she was the best hope they had of

finding out about this glowing cube that shimmered in the center of the vault. Maybe their last

hope; they couldn't keep on this way. She had the training, the experience, and the one odd,

vital ability that the others had lacked. Yet now, in the darkness and silence, she was terribly

afraid.

The tiny earphone clicked and she heard McEvoy's voice. "Gail? How are you doing?"

"Fine," she said. "Cold. Waiting for my eyes to adjust." Her own voice sounded scratchy

in her ears.

"Good. Can you see it?"

"Oh, yes. I can see it, all right." Through the earphone she could hear the faint

swish-swish of a tape recorder and the whirr of the refrigerating pumps below the vault. "It's

like you said…kind of a cold blue, almost phosphorescent. It wavers…I can't really focus on

it."

"You'll have to go closer," McEvoy said. "Try to describe it, the best you can." He

paused. "And Gail, don't be a heroine. Anything funny, let out a yell."

"I know. If it would just hold still a minute." She moved toward the center of the room, her

eyes fixed on the luminescent spot in the center. It was clearer now as her eyes adjusted to

it. Or at least brighter; the outlines were still indistinct and shimmering. As she moved closer

the coldness seemed to increase. She rubbed her hands together, pushed back her hair,

and peered into the gloom.

A ghostly thing, she thought suddenly. Shaped like a cube, six inches square, except

that the angles weren't quite right. Before the pumps began, it was a block of tungsten on a

tripod. Now, just this wavering something, hanging in mid-air…

She moved closer, stared at the shimmering outlines, glowing a frosty blue. Like a box,

she thought, but not quite. Like a doorway, with a long corridor leading…somewhere…far,

far beyond…It was holding her eyes now, a strange, fascinating thing, half-hypnotizing her.

She tried to look away, but the glowing cube held her gaze.

At her ear, McEvoy's voice: "Gail? What do you see?"

"I don't know." She groped for the right words. "This is very odd…it's…I can't describe it.

But I think…wait a minute!"

As she stared, the shimmering cube seemed to grow larger, enveloping her as she tried

to see inside. There were outlines, shapes in there…vague and indistinct, wavering just

beyond her perception. A step closer, a turn of her head…if only her eyes would focus, hold

it still for a moment! Somewhere, again, she thought she heard McEvoy's voice calling her

name as she was drawn toward this strange, glowing thing…but it seemed far away,

unimportant. She didn't even try to answer. Again his voice, urgent this time, calling her

name, and then: "Frank, throw the switch! We're losing her!" and the distant rattle of the vault

door being thrown open.

The last thing she heard was McEvoy's voice shouting her name, and then, suddenly,

she was inside.

—6—

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TheUniverseBetweenAlanE.Nourse Portionsofthisbookwereoriginallypublished,indifferentform,inAstoundingScienceFiction(nowAnalogScienceFactandFiction)instoriesentitled"HighThreshold"and"TheUniverseBetween."Copyright1951byStreetandSmithpublications.Thenovelitselfwaspublishedwithadditionalmaterialin1967...

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Alan E. Nourse -- The Universe Between

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