No Morning After

But this is terrible!' said the Great Scientist. `Surely there is something we can do!'
`Yes, Your Highness, but it will be extremely difficult. The planet is more than five hundred
light−years away, and it is hard to make contact. However, we believe we can do it, but there is another
problem. So far, we have been quite unable to communicate with these people − they do not seem to be
telepathic in any way. And if we cannot talk to them, we cannot help them.'
There was a long silence while the Great Scientist thought about the problem, and arrived, as he
always did, at the right answer.
`Any intelligent beings must have some telepathic people among them. We must send out hundreds
of searchers, ready to catch the smallest thought. When you find a single open mind, work as hard as
you can on it. We must get our message through.'
`Very good, Your Highness. We will begin at once.' Across the huge emptiness of space, which
light itself took half a thousand years to cross, the brains of the planet Thaar sent out their long lines of
thought, searching desperately for a single human being whose mind could receive their message. And
they were lucky − they found Bill Cross.
At least, they thought it was luck at the time, though later they were not so sure. And it was only
chance that opened Bill's mind to them for a few seconds − a chance that was not likely to happen again
for many centuries.
There were three reasons for this chance happening. First, at that moment in the Earth's movement
around its sun, Bill was well placed to receive a message from Thaar. So, of course, were millions of  other people on the same part of the Earth's surface, but then they were not rocket engineers; they had
not spent years thinking and dreaming about space and space travel.
And they were not, as Bill was, very, very drunk, on the edge of unconsciousness, trying to escape
from reality into the world of dreams, where there were no disappointments.
Of course, Bill could understand the army's opinion.
`You are paid, Dr Cross,' his boss had told him sharply, `to make rockets which can carry bombs.
You are not paid to invent spaceships, or to use the computers here for your own purposes. So this must
now stop.'
Bill knew that he wouldn't lose his job; he was too valuable to the army for that. But did he want
the job anyway? He wasn't sure of anything except that he felt angry and miserable − and that Brenda
had finally gone off with Johny Gardner.
w He put his chin in his hands, stared dully at the white wall on the other side of the table, and
emptied his mind of thought . . .
At that moment, several thousand brains on Thaar gave a soundless cry of delight, and the wall in
front of Bill disappeared into a kind of mist. He seemed to be looking down a tunnel that had no end.
And in fact, he was.
Bill stared at it with interest, but he was used to seeing hallucinations when he was drunk, and he
had seen more exciting ones than this. And when the voice started to speak in his mind, he did not reply
at first. Even when drunk, he didn't like having conversations with himself.
`Bill,' the voice began, `listen carefully. We have had great difficulty contacting you, and this is
extremely important. We are speaking to you from a very distant planet. You are the only human being
we have been able to contact, so you must understand what we are saying.'
Bill felt a little worried. How serious was it, he wondered, when you started to hear voices? Well, it
was best not to get excited.
`OK,' he said, sounding bored. `Go ahead and talk to me. I won't mind − if it's interesting.'
There was a pause. Then the voice continued, still in a friendly way, but now rather worried as well.
`But our message isn't just interesting. It means life or death for all human beings.'
`I'm listening,' said Bill. `It'll help to pass the time.'
Five hundred light−years away, the Thaarns talked hurriedly among themselves. Something
seemed to be wrong, but they could not decide exactly what. They had certainly made contact, but this
was not the kind of reply they had expected. Well, they could only carry on and hope for the best.
`Listen, Bill,' they continued. `Our scientists have just discovered that your sun is going to explode
three days from now − in seventy−four hours, to be exact. Nothing can stop it. But don't be alarmed. We
can save you, if you do what we say.'
`Go on,' said Bill. This hallucination was certainly unusual.
`We can make what we call a bridge − it's a kind of tunnel through space, like the one you're
looking into now. It's difficult to explain, even to one of your mathematicians.'
`Just a minute,' argued Bill. `I am a mathematician, and a good one, drunk or not drunk. I suppose
you're talking about some kind of short cut through a higher dimension of space. That's an old idea −
before Albert Einstein.'
A feeling of surprise entered Bill's mind.
`We had no idea you knew so much about science,' said the Thaarns. `But there's no time to discuss
that. The important thing is this − if you stepped into that tunnel in front of you, you'd find yourself
immediately on another planet. It's a short cut, as you said, but through the thirty− seventh dimension.'
`And it leads to your world?'
`On no − you couldn't live here. But there are plenty of planets like Earth in the universe, and
we've found one that will suit human beings. We'll make bridges like this all over Earth, so your people
can just walk through them and escape. They'll have to start from the beginning on the new planet, of
course, but it's their only hope. You must pass on this message, and tell them what to do.'
`But no one's going to listen to me,' Bill said. `Why don't you talk to the president?'
`Because yours was the only mind we could contact. Others seemed closed to us; we don't