Contents

COPYRIGHT INFO

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series

THE CHILDREN’S ROOM, by Raymond F. Jones

SIDETRACK IN TIME, by William P. McGivern

GEORGE ALL THE WAY, by Richard Wilson

ABSOLUTELY NO PARADOX, by Lester del Rey

THE HOHOKAM DIG, by Theodore Pratt

GUARANTEED TENURE, by H.B. Fyfe

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 42, by Grendel Briarton

NEVER GO BACK, by Charles V. de Vet

THE ANCESTRAL THREAD, by Emil Petaja

THE SONS OF JAPHETH, by Richard Wilson

MEDDLER, by Philip K. Dick

THE MAN WHO LIKED LIONS, by John Bernard Daley

FLAME FOR THE FUTURE, by William P. McGivern

DINOSAUR GOES HOLLYWOOD, by Emil Petaja

TIME OUT FOR TOMORROW, by Richard Wilson

REMEMBER THE ALAMO! by R. R. Fehrenbach

GUN FOR HIRE, by Mack Reynolds

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 63, by Grendel Briarton

COPYRIGHT INFO

The Third Time Travel MEGAPACK™ is copyright © 2015 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved. Cover art by © Photobank / Fotolia.

* * * *

The MEGAPACK™ ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

I’m a sucker for time travel stories—I admit it! One of the first adult science fiction books I bought in a bookstore as a kid was Keith Laumer’s Dinosaur Beach, which thoroughly hooked me. From there I went on to L. Sprague de Camp’s “A Gun for Dinosaur,” Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” and so many others…more than I can count!

Now here is a selection of 18 more—many of them rare tales from the pulps that I know you haven’t read before. Even if you’re jaded with time-travel (Dinosaurs vs. Cowboys? Again?) you’ll find something new in these pages.

Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

ABOUT THE SERIES

Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK™ ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

The MEGAPACK™ ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK™ ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

TYPOS

Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.

The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series

MYSTERY

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THE GOLDEN AGE OF PULP FICTION

1. George Allan England

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION

1. Winston K. Marks

2. Mark Clifton

3. Poul Anderson

4. Clifford D. Simak

5. Lester del Rey (vol. 1)

6. Charles L. Fontenay

7. H.B. Fyfe (vol. 1)

8. Milton Lesser (Stephen Marlowe)

9. Dave Dryfoos

10. Carl Jacobi

11. F.L. Wallace

12. David H. Keller, M.D.

13. Lester del Rey (vol. 2)

14. Charles De Vet

15. H.B. Fyfe (vol. 2)

16. William C. Gault

17. Alan E. Nourse

18. Jerome Bixby

19. Charles De Vet (Vo. 2)

20. Evelyn E. Smith

THE GOLDEN AGE OF WEIRD FICTION

1. Henry S. Whitehead

2. George T. Wetzel

3. Emil Petaja

4. Nictzin Dyalhis

5. David H. Keller

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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* Not available in the United States

** Not available in the European Union

***Out of print.

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The John Gregory Betancourt MINIPACK™

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The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany MEGAPACK™”)

The Wildside Book of Fantasy

The Wildside Book of Science Fiction

Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries

THE CHILDREN’S ROOM, by Raymond F. Jones

Bill Starbrook sat down carefully in his battered soup-and-fish and picked up the latest “Journal of Physics.” There had been time to read only the first three pages of Sanderson’s article on nuclear emissions before he and Rose had gone off to what she euphemistically termed “an evening’s entertainment.” Now, at two o’clock in the morning, he tried to shake from his head the brain fog induced by the foul air and worse liquor of the cabaret.

Finally he gave it up. It was useless to try to keep up on his science. But that was the price to be paid for being Chief Engineer of an outfit like Bradford Electronics. Commerce before research, and the customer’s gin is always the best.

But his day was coming. He was nearly ready to break loose as an independent consultant.

As he moved to lay the Journal down he glanced at the spot on the end table at which it was aimed. There was a new book there, one he hadn’t seen before. He dropped the Journal into the magazine rack and picked up the unfamiliar book. One of young Walt’s. The kid was always bringing in strange volumes from the university and the public libraries. His 240 I.Q. mind was as inquisitive as a pup’s. He would read anything he could get his hands on.

The present volume looked like something out of an ancient law or medical library to judge by the cover. Walt read as many curdling comics as the average ten-year-old in the neighborhood, but he read voraciously also of everything else from Plutarch’s Lives to the Journal of Physics.

Starbrook was somewhat puzzled to find that the ponderous looking tome in his hands was nothing but a fairy tale.

He thumbed through it curiously. There was no accounting for the swift, piercing inquiry of the boy’s mind. It was perhaps no more inconsistent that he should find entertainment in a fairy story than that he should find intellectual pleasure in atomic theory. All this while his companions confined themselves to such moderations as comic books and baseball.

The words of the story caught Starbrook’s eye. He found himself scanning the sentences, following their meaning. A strange, tantalizing quality escaped him at first, then became plain as he went along. It was the fact that almost every word had a double semantic content. It was like reading two stories simultaneously. He marveled at the skill that had been required to construct such a tale.

The secondary, or theme story, as he thought of it, held him entranced. It was a curious tale about a group of men different in mental and physical attributes from their fellows. They were sad and lonely because they were isolated from each other and because the human beings with whom they associated did not understand them. Then, magically, there appeared a book that went throughout the Earth and led them to each other and through a door into a place where they lived happily ever after.

A curious tale, it was as if the shadow of a strange and mysterious meaning lay hidden there just beyond the grasp of his imagination. He revised his first opinion. It was the kind of thing that would appeal to Walt, all right.

Then, suddenly, Starbrook awoke to the fact that the time was four-thirty and he could snatch scarcely two hours’ sleep before getting down to the labs.

* * * *

At six o’clock, however, he roused blearily at the sound of movement within the bedroom. Rose was getting dressed.

“What’s the big idea?” he said.

“Shh, darling. Go back to sleep. I’ll call you in an hour. Walt’s been coughing for the last hour. I’m going in to see him. If he has a cold he can’t go to school this morning.”

Starbrook shook his head fiercely to try to clear it. He knew it was useless to try to sleep more now. It would only make him more dopey at work. He glanced groggily at the clock and stumbled into Walt’s room.

The boy was smothering a cough. He grinned as the spasms ended. “I’m the victim of a filterable virus, Dad. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Starbrook sat down on the edge of the bed. “Better stay home today and not let the bugs get any bigger hold on you.”

“I guess so, but gee—I’ve got a library book due today and they’re awfully strict. Maybe you’d take it back for me?”

“Sure. Where does it go? What book is it?”

“It’s on the table in the living room. It’s from the Children’s Room of the University Library.”

“That odd fairy tale book? I looked at it last night. I didn’t know they had any such books at the University.”

“I didn’t either until a month ago. They’ve got some swell books there. It seems like you go along and think you’ve just been reading a swell story and all of a sudden you find it’s just been teaching you something. Like putting candy on a pill. I sure wish they’d do it that way in school.”

Starbrook laughed. “Sounds like a good system. I’ll have to have a look into some more of these books they have there.”

“I hope you do,” said Walt quietly.

“I suppose Miss Perkins is responsible for them. She’s always up on the latest stuff to improve the mind of man and beast.”

Bill Starbrook was well known around the campus of Hedeman University. He frequented the excellent research library there and had arranged for Walt’s special use of the books there, although he was sure that Miss Perkins, the librarian, regarded them both as unconventional interlopers who had no place on a dignified campus.

Pausing on the way to work to return the book, Starbrook found Miss Perkins alone at the desk. He unlocked his brief case and took out Walt’s book.

“Good morning, Miss Perkins. I wonder if you’d see that this gets to the Children’s Room for me? It’s due today and Walt’s sick.”

Miss Perkins smiled a good morning, then frowned. “The Children’s Room? We have no children’s department.”

She picked up the book and examined its title page and library number. She frowned even more darkly. “You must be mistaken. This doesn’t even make sense. It isn’t one of our books.”

Starbrook grunted in irritation. “I was sure Walt said he got it here.”

“It must be from the public library, though I’m sure I don’t understand the markings. What is it? Something mathematical?”

Starbrook looked at her and mentally counted to ten. He was in no mood for jokes this morning. He said sweetly, “It’s just some fairy tales my boy has been reading.”

He left before he observed Miss Perkins’ severely pursed lips. ’

As he turned away, the incident hung on in his mind with irritating persistence. He knew he hadn’t been so dopey that morning that he hadn’t heard Walt correctly. He was certain the boy had said the Children’s Room at the University Library.

Then, as he was almost to the door, he glanced to the left and swore softly. There, over a doorway, was the designation: Children’s Room.

What was Miss Perkins trying to pull on him? he wondered. Mathematics—!

He wondered why he hadn’t noticed this room before, but he had always dashed through in such a hurry. It could easily escape notice hidden as it was in a shallow alcove.

The room wasn’t very large. Seated at tables were about a dozen children ranging in ages from about eight to fourteen. The librarian at the desk was little and wrinkled. A quality of tremendous age like an aura about her, defied description, but her blue eyes were sharp and young.

She seemed startled by his appearance. “You haven’t been here before!”

Starbrook liked her at once. There was none of Miss Perkins’ sourness which he had come to associate with all librarians.

He smiled, “No. My son, Walt, checked this out. He is sick today so he asked me to bring it in.”

“Were you—have you read any of this book?”

Starbrook was puzzled by her alarm and amazement at his appearance. “Yes,” he said. “It’s quite an interesting book. I haven’t kept up very well with progress in children’s literature.”

The little old librarian exclaimed, “This is so unusual. I wonder what I ought to—”

Starbrook had about reached the end of his endurance for the day. It was twenty minutes to nine—twenty minutes until he had to meet all his section chiefs for weekly conference.

“I must go now,” he said. “If you will just check this book in for my boy—”

The librarian seemed to reach some decision about a matter beyond his comprehension. She lost her helpless expression and smiled gently. “Of course. And would you take this next volume in the series he is reading? Also, I wonder if you would do us the favor of taking a couple of other volumes and glancing over them critically yourself. We have some rather radically different works here and we’re anxious to have adult criticism on them.”

Starbrook’s irritation lessened before her smile and he nodded. “I’ll be glad to.”

The day passed with all the irritations and commotions that might be expected the day after such a night before as Starbrook had experienced. He was at least relieved to find that it had resulted in clinching the purchase of the Cromwell patents, which had been the object of last night’s entertainment.

He was tired when he finally reached home again after such a day, but not too tired to put on a cheery smile for Walt as he told Rose to wait dinner a few minutes. He took the new book and went into Walt’s bedroom.

Walt’s eyes lighted. “Gee, Dad, I thought you’d never come! You brought me another book! Maybe I could talk you into reading to me.”

“Sure. There’s nothing I’d like better. The librarian even asked me to take a couple for myself. We’ll read right after dinner. O.K.?”

“Sure. I’m glad you saw Miss Edythe. She’s a nice old lady, isn’t she? She shows me just which books to read so that I won’t get mixed up on them.”

“Are you supposed to read them in a certain order?”

“Yes. I picked up some out of order one day and they looked like a foreign language. I have to read the first ones to understand the harder ones. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.”

After dinner, Starbrook went back and opened the new volume that Miss Edythe had sent for Walt.

“You really can read this stuff, all right?” said Walt.

“Sure, why?”

“Well, you haven’t read the first books yet, and I just wondered,” Walt said evasively.

Starbrook took up the reading. The story was something of a continuation of what he had read the previous night, the story of the “different” men. In long detail it told how the first man learned that he was different, and how he finally located a few others of his kind. Together, they prepared the magic book and sent it on its way around the world to gather all the rest.

The darkness of early autumn slowly filled the room, and the words grew dim on the pages before Starbrook. But within his brain it was as if a glowing, expanding illumination were present. The story that had been secondary in the previous book was now the primary, as he termed them to himself. And the secondary story of this book was a devastating, unbelievable revelation.

“You are one of the ‘different’ men,” its unspoken, intangible message shouted within his brain, “and this is the magic book. Follow where it leads and you shall find the haven that has been prepared for all of us!”

He slammed the book shut abruptly as the darkness became too great to see the words any longer, but he could not still that persistent message in his brain.

The white face of Walt lying against the pillow was hardly visible. “Don’t stop,” the boy said. “Turn on the light and let’s go on.”

“Walt—” Starbrook hesitated. He didn’t quite know how to say it. “What does this mean to you? Do you find any symbolism in it besides the actual story?”

“Sure. It says that we’re a different kind of people from most others. It’s going to show us how to get to a place where there are others of our kind. We couldn’t read it if that weren’t so. That’s why I’m so glad you can read it. You’re one of us, too.”

Starbrook was glad the darkness hid his face and his eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Miss Edythe told me that others wouldn’t believe that there were ordinary words in these books. She said not to show them to anyone for that reason. I found out she was right.” Disappointment clouded Walt’s eyes. “Mom picked up one of the books one day and she seemed almost afraid of it. I told her then that it was algebra. She didn’t know the difference, but still seemed afraid. I left it for you on purpose—”

Starbrook had an average amount of imagination for an engineer, but it staggered before the implications of all this. He told himself it was only an extraordinary realism in the story of the “different” men and their magic book. It was fantastic to believe the men and the book had any counterpart in actuality.

Yet in his mind there was a supreme, undeniable knowledge that could not be denied. Before it, his doubts and name calling were the taunts of a little boy before an impossible, white fairyland.

The book existed.

This was it.

The “different” men were real. He was one of them—he and Walt belonged to that mysterious clan.

But who were they? What did this unanswerable knowledge imply?

“I have to do a little work downstairs,” Starbrook said. “If you aren’t asleep, I’ll come up later and read some more.”

He went into the living room and opened the first of the two books that Miss Edythe had asked him to look over.

He was surprised to find that these weren’t as easy to read as the ones Walt had. The very language was somehow less comprehensible. At once he knew that these were not children’s books—or were they? Books for the children who had come up through the gradual orientation process of the more elementary volumes?

There was no pretense of a story.

The book opened at once with an abstruse exposition on the principles of biology, heredity, and radiation. It was hard going, but as he continued he seemed to grow in ability to grasp the words and principles. But he tried in vain to imagine the eight-year-olds he had seen in the Children’s Room grasping the substance of this work!

Rose came in to protest his staying up, but he refused to quit. His mind was leaping across the gigantic peaks and crags of the magnificent exposition that lay before him. At midnight he put the book down, completed, dimly realizing that he had read and absorbed a work that should have required weeks.

But what was the purpose of it all? Why were such books in a children’s department of a library? He still could not credit the insistent, semantic implications of the fairy story that he and Walt were of the “different” men. As yet, there was no explanation of the difference, and the mysterious destination of all these men.

And then the answer came swiftly and like a sudden burst of flame before his eyes. He opened the second of the two volumes which he had not been able to comprehend before. Its words were plain now and addressed directly to the reader.

“You can easily comprehend, now, that you are a mutant.”

He stared at the words, trying to shed their meaning from his mind, but they stayed, and he knew the truth of them.

“You have come far enough to understand what that means,” the book went on. “You are aware of the extraterrestrial radiations which are continually producing mutations, and you understand some of the processes by which they are formed. It is not difficult, therefore, for you to understand that you are one of the many thousands of the ‘different’ men, the mutants who throng the Earth, scarcely knowing that they differ from their fellows in any matter.”

Starbrook looked up. It would be easy to admit the truth of this with regard to Walt. With an I.Q. of 240 at the last test—

But Bill Starbrook—what could there be about him to indicate a mutation? He was a reasonably good engineer—but no better than a couple of million other guys. He possessed no unusual marks of mind or body.

“Thousands of mutations occur every month,” he read on. “Most of them are lethal because they are of no advantage to the individual or to the race. But over a period of time there are also unknown thousands of beneficent mutations, most of which are also eventually lost.

“They are lost to the race through accident, improper mating or no mating at all. They are lost in many instances to the individual because the differences which they impose render him more or less misfit in social aggregations. There are, of course, numerous other instances in which desirable mutations produce a more intelligent, more enduring, completely superior individual, who is never recognized by himself or his associates as a mutant. His characteristics may be passed on for a few generations, but unless combined in proper matings they may become recessive and lost.

“In a time far distant from your own, the human race is in competition with another major race in the galaxy who are out-evolving mankind. In order to maintain not only the superiority which the human race has gained, but its very existence, it is necessary that the natural processes of evolution be speeded. Wasteful and ghastly experiments have proved the impossibility of doing this by artificial means. Only through natural processes which cannot be duplicated at will can evolution proceed in an effective manner. But nature, in her waste of precious mutations throughout the ages, is herself responsible for man’s dire position in this future day.

“Our purpose, then, is to accelerate the evolutionary rate of the human race by salvaging the beneficent mutations which have been wasted through the ages.

“You who have come this far with us have a duty now, a duty to join us, to bring your mutated characteristics before the race for the benefit of all.”

Starbrook was forced to halt. It was too vast, too foreign for his mind or imagination. He was just Bill Starbrook, Chief Engineer at Bradford Electronics. It just wasn’t in the cards for him to be reading some mysterious message out of the ages, pleading with him to come to some unnamed place for the good of the race.

He laughed shortly. Children’s Room! Someone had certainly succeeded in producing the most fantastic, incredible fairy tales of all time. Almost had him believing for a moment that he was a mutant! He’d have to tell Miss Edythe that the books were realistic if nothing else.

He strolled out onto the porch. In the clear, cold night the stars looked near. A race had to utilize its mutants, or be outmoded in the contest for evolutionary perfection, he thought. He wondered what the ultimate product of human evolution would be. No doubt it would differ from man as man differed from the anthropoids and reptiles before him.

His eyes on the stars, he thought, were there other spawning races out there somewhere in their infancy, who would eventually challenge man and threaten to sweep him aside in the backwash of hopeless evolutionary superiority?

He brushed aside the maddening thought. There was one way to settle this once and for all. He could see the lights on in the house of Professor Martin, a block down the street on the other side. Martin was head of the ancient languages department at the University and sometimes they played gin rummy together.

Starbrook heaved into his topcoat and quietly left the house with one of the volumes under his arm.

Professor Martin was a big man with a bushy beard. He always reminded Starbrook of one of the ancient Greeks whose language he taught.

He greeted Starbrook with a welcoming roar. “Come in, Bill! I was just hoping somebody would come in for a good game of poker or gin. My wife went home for a week and I’ve been as lonely as a hibernating bear with insomnia.”

Starbrook entered and removed his coat. “I can’t stay. I just wanted to show you something and get your opinion on it. See what you make of this.”

Starbrook opened the last volume that he had been reading. Its potent message leaped out to him from every character and word, but he turned his eyes carefully to Martin.

The Professor scowled, “Where’d you get this? Certainly these characters are nothing like I’ve ever seen, and I think I’ve seen them all.”

Starbrook sighed. “I was hoping perhaps that you could read it and tell me what it is. It’s—it’s something I just picked up in a second-hand store in town. Probably some crazy lingo, something like that Esperanto of a few years ago, only worse.”

Professor Martin shook his head. “Possibly. Certainly it isn’t recognizable to me. Would you mind my keeping this for a while?”

“Well—perhaps later. I’ve already promised it to another friend right away. That’s why I came over even though it’s so late.”

“Oh, that’s quite all right! I’m glad to have some company. It’s lonely here, you know—”

* * * *

When Starbrook finally got out under the night sky again, the full force of the knowledge hit him like a blow.

I’m a mutant, he thought. Walt is a mutant. If we weren’t we couldn’t read these unknown characters as if they were plain English, while Martin and others find them unintelligible. And that must mean that all the rest of it is true, too.

And yet, there was still no meaning to it. This talk of a distant time, and a strange place of meeting for mutants out of all the ages—

That little old librarian, Miss. Edythe, was evidently the key to the whole business. She knew the source of the books. She could tell him what it was about.

Then abruptly he remembered something he had not thought of during the evening. Miss Perkins’ words: “We have no Children’s Department!”

Starbrook was waiting at the outer entrance the following morning when the library building was opened by Miss Perkins herself. She recognized Starbrook and smiled bleakly. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Miss Perkins.”

He passed on into the foyer and turned in the direction of the Children’s Room. Through the open door he could see Miss Edythe already at her desk. And that was curious, since the library had just been opened. He glanced back as Miss Perkins passed on her way into the main library office. She looked at him—and at the door of the Children’s Room as if nothing were there!

It gave Starbrook a sudden feeling of peculiar dread. He hurried in and found numerous children sitting about the tables in the room. He wondered how they had got in there.

“Good morning, Mr. Starbrook,” said Miss Edythe. “I was hoping we’d see you this morning. Did you get time to glance over the books I asked for an opinion on?”

“Yes, I read them completely.”

“That’s fine. What do you think of what you read?”

“Miss Edythe—have you read these books? Do you know what is in them?”

“Why, surely. I’ve read every book in here quite carefully. It’s been my life’s work.”

“Then what is the explanation?”

The little old lady looked at him soberly out of her bright blue eyes, then moved from the chair on which she sat before the checking desk.

“Please come into the office,” she said.

Starbrook followed her. She closed the door of the small room and sat down, bidding him to have a chair opposite.

“Yours is quite the most difficult case that has ever come to my attention,” she began hesitantly. “In five hundred years there has been only one adult who appeared as suitably material for our colony. You will excuse me if I seem to oversimplify things because I am used to speaking with children—children, however, generally with an intelligence quotient of above 220, so that perhaps we can understand each other well enough after all.

“You recall, in the second of the books I gave you, the challenge to you as a mutant—”

“That’s what I came to ask about! The whole business is so unbelievable, but I checked on the books. They couldn’t be read by one of the University language professors.”

“That should contribute considerably to your conviction of the truth of what you have read, then,” said Miss Edythe.

“You mean there is actually a group of mutants somewhere who have been gathered to—to save the human race?”

“We hardly like to speak of it so melodramatically—but that is essentially our purpose. We’re working to maintain the superiority of the human race in the face of an evolutionary lag from which we suffer. If we do not maintain that superiority it will certainly result in our eventual extinction. These are of course probabilities which have been worked out by our scientists who understand such things. Sufficient for the moment is the fact that we are gathering out the mutants of all the ages of man’s history in order to accelerate human evolution. By the proper utilization of these mutants we intend to out-evolve, outstep our competitors in the galaxy who threaten our supremacy and our existence.

“I cannot be aware of your past concept of mutants. With the children it is easy because they learn from the beginning the true character of mutations, the fact that a small variation in the gene for some characteristic may produce an individual with changes from the norm of his race, and highly advantageous both to himself and to the race. Mutations, however, are generally of such a minor character that their possessor is unaware of the variation. This is one important fact to remember in connection with our work.

“Unless, however, we can become aware of these valuable mutations and utilize them we are going to be left behind in the backwater of evolution much as the great apes were when man appeared.”

Starbrook stared dumbly, trying to comprehend.

“A group of us long ago set out to preserve the useful mutants of the race from the earliest beginnings. We have many methods of accomplishing this. This library is one of the most effective. We have devised a language, in which our books are printed, which is intelligible only to mutants. There is a certain brain characteristic which might be termed mutant-linked, which makes this possible. That is, when any kind of gene variation occurs there is also an inevitable variation of another gene at a specific locus which makes the brain receptive to a good many other stimuli, most of which you have never been aware because the stimuli have not been presented. This language is one such stimulus. Another ability your mutation gives you is that of entering the room here.”

“Why, I just walked in!” exclaimed Starbrook.

Miss Edythe smiled. “Yes, of course. But haven’t you wondered why no others also walk in, why it is that only the mutants enter?”

“Why—yes, but—”

“This inscription, ‘Children’s Room’ above the doorway appears to non-mutants as only a portion of the decorative design of the library building. You read it because it is in the mutation language. In addition, there is a complex pattern on the floor in front of the doorway, which marks a pathway for you to follow into the room. It is a path which no one would possibly chance upon, but your mutated senses follow it instinctively. To others, there is simply no doorway, no Children’s Room at all.”

“But what is the nature of my main mutation?” Starbrook demanded.

“That will have to be determined by proper examination. And there’s one final warning I must make. Don’t expect too much. The disappointments among us mutants are great. For example, in my own case the mutation was that of longevity. I am something over nine hundred years old—”

“Nine hun—!”

Miss Edythe nodded. “Yes. And combined with my particular mutation is a linked sterility factor. As I say, the disappointments among our group are great.”

Her ancient eyes seemed suddenly to be peering down the ages, and Starbrook thought afterward that it was that moment of looking into those strong eyes that had seen so many alien centuries that did most to convince him of the truth of the entire matter. “What am I to do?” he said at last.

“You will join us?”

“My son, Walt, too?”

“He has much to learn yet before we can present the entire plan to him.”

“It’s difficult to answer your question,” said Starbrook. “I just don’t know—”

“It’s hardly more than moving to a strange city,” said Miss Edythe, “except that your neighbors and associates will be from all ages and locales of time and space. In a way you will find it highly invigorating. Of course, there are ties that must be severed, friends, your wife—It is difficult that you are an adult!”

Rose!

For first time he took full cognizance of the problem this created with respect to his marriage. Subconsciously, he supposed that she would share in whatever change was involved. If leaving Rose were one condition of joining the mutants he was certain that they could well do without his contribution in the future as they had evidently done in the past.

But what of the children? he thought suddenly. Did it mean that they were to leave—?

There was a new cold tightness within him as he said, “Could I have the examination to determine what I’m good for, before I decide the matter?”

“Yes, it can be arranged immediately. Please follow me.”

They left by another door that led into a corridor which Starbrook knew was no part of the library building of Hedeman University. As they crossed it, he got a glimpse through a broad window and gasped audibly. The scene was one of green rolling hills dotted with small clusters of white buildings, a valley of serenity and life instead of the idiotic cluster of masonry that formed the cities of his own age.

His guide allowed no time to ponder the scene. She led him through the door across the hall. Inside he found himself in the midst of a roomful of unfamiliar looking equipment. A young, professional looking man greeted him with a smile.

“Doctor Rogers,” said Miss Edythe in introduction. “He will conduct the examination. He knows about you. Come back to my office when you are through.”

She left then, and Rogers indicated a chair. “It’s a pleasure to have a full grown individual to talk to for a change,” he said amiably. “Sometimes those pre-adolescent brats with I.Q.s of 250 to 300 are just a little too smart for their pants. I was one of them so I should know. Now, if you’ll just lie back here on this table—”

Starbrook struggled desperately to hold to the fragments of his mind that constituted Bill Starbrook, Chief Engineer of Bradford Electronics. That was all that was real. This world of fantastic Miss Edythe who was nine hundred years old, and the window that looked out upon a green valley where Hedeman should have been were only parts of a nightmare from which he would awake, the nightmare of being examined for possible useful mutations to aid the human race in its attempts to hurdle the laws of evolution.

He endured the long hours of the examination by repeating this fancy over and over again. Then, at last, Doctor Rogers announced that he was through.

Starbrook faced him across a desk. Before the doctor was a mass of records and charts, the accumulations of the tests.

“I have here your complete chromosome map,” he said slowly.

“What mutations do I have that I can contribute to the advancement of man’s evolution?”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then Rogers looked up from the charts. “I may as well give it to you straight. The answer is: none. Absolutely none.”

For a moment Starbrook sat stunned. During the past hours he had built up a vast mental structure on the premise that he was needed in assisting humanity reach the heights. He had fought through the battle of deciding what sacrifices it would be worth. Now—

“None—? I don’t understand.

“Miss Edythe told me—The mutation language—”

“Your case is most unusual. The total of your mutations consists only of the sensory characteristics by which you were able to read our mutation language, and find your way into the Children’s Room. I don’t recall a single instance previously where this mutation was not linked with some other. It is somewhat interesting from a purely biological viewpoint, particularly in view of the fact that you are the father of Walt. Practically, however, your mutation has no value whatever.”

Starbrook laughed then, his voice unable to disguise his disappointment and a vague shame. “So I am no use to you after all? I have nothing that is of use to my race?”

Rogers looked at him intently. “Don’t emphasize the significance of this,” he warned. “It means nothing whatever to you as an individual. You must realize that only one out of every few hundred human beings has any detectable mutation. Only one out of many thousands of mutations is of real value to the race.

“We are able to eliminate the children who are of no value to us without revealing what it’s all about. Your case has been obviously different.”

“Of course,” said Starbrook. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not going to be bitter about this, I had no right to expect anything out of it. I suppose I’ve always been sort of an idealist, hoping to do something to lift men up, and all that sort of thing. I guess somewhere my subconscious must have grabbed hold of this pretty hard and seen in it a chance to realize those idealisms. But, anyway, what about my son, Walt?”

“We must have Walt. We absolutely must. His mutations appear to be the apex of endless unknown processes of nature, culminating in potentialities that will make him one of the most valuable members of our mutants’ colony. His life will change the race for generations to come.”

“He doesn’t know all this yet?”

“No. Even with his high understanding it must be fed to him slowly because he is a child. But he is being educated by the books to the point where he can be given full knowledge of his potentialities and our requirements.”

“But what of his relationship to us! I’m not yet convinced of the urgency of this crisis you’ve spoken vaguely of—not sufficiently to make me ready to allow my son to begin a new life here with perhaps infrequent contact with us.”

“Once he comes here and begins his work,” said Rogers incisively, “there will be no further contact with you.”

Starbrook stared in disbelief. “You mean you expect us to give you our son as completely as if he were dead?”

“Watch your semantic extensions,” Rogers said drily. “I doubt that anything could convince a member of this age of the urgency of our problem, but in your case I’d like to try, for several reasons.

“Imagine, if you will, two planets on which life had simultaneous beginnings and similar forms of development. On one of these, however, the natural rate of mutant occurrence and consequent evolution is several times that of the other, so that by the time man—so called modern man—appears on one, the great apes are just beginning to appear, on the other.

“Imagine then, the situation when the world with slower evolving life forms has advanced to the point where man appears. What of the other world and the relationship between the two in case they should make contact?

“This is roughly the situation as it existed in the ‘normal’ time in which this superior race was discovered. We found them as far ahead of us as we are ahead of the great apes today—and incidentally there is far greater physical differentiation between them and us than between us and the apes.

“As might be expected, they regard us as little more than we would regard the apes—rather clever apes. Our movements through space, our mechanical achievements are no more to them than the work of clever apes. Though they appear to be a moral, peaceful race they can find no basis for compassion towards us or interest in communication or trade. There is only one possible relation between us, as there has always been only one possible relation between man and the lower forms of life on earth—that possibility is exploitation.

“Our scientists have demonstrated by means you would not be aware of that this exploitation of man by these—super-men—is inevitable. The hope of combating them and so preventing their exploitation of Earth and man is about as great as a tribe of apes would have of preventing capture by an army of hunters equipped with every scientific gadget you know, from radar to atomic bombs.

“There is only one hope for the future of our race: That is to bring ourselves to an equal or superior level with respect to this rival race. And it must be done within the space of a very few human generations, according to our predictions. The mutant colony was founded about one generation ago as soon as the full picture of conditions became apparent. Our work indicates that we can feel confident of success, because mutations have been abundant in the development of man. Nature seems to have been generous but wasteful of them.

“We have already produced a generation of the next form of man, and the individuals of that generation are applying all the powers of their minds to the problem. As you can see, our facilities are pyramiding rapidly, since we have created the next form of man and they are busy on the problem of going a step beyond.

“But, back to Walt. We need him. He carries three extremely valuable, recessive mutations which have never been discovered before. We feel that he will enable us to make the second step beyond man as you know him. You wouldn’t dare interfere with that critical advancement, if you could understand the full depth of the problem. Unfortunately, first-hand knowledge cannot be given you.”

Starbrook had been listening with a gradually increasing tension that left his muscles aching as he abruptly shook his head and forced his attention away from, Rogers’ face.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just can’t grasp it all so suddenly. If only I could see for myself—”

“You can’t,” said Rogers with finality. “Ordinarily, of course, we do not complicate our operations with these problems. It is only the accident of your own peculiar mutation that you have become aware of us at all. We could act without your consent at all—”

Starbrook felt a sudden frantic chill sweep through him. He had seen enough to know that these mutants could do as Rogers said. They could steal Walt away and banish him forever in this strange land beyond the doors of the Children’s Room.

“It is against our principles to cause pain to anyone,” Rogers continued. “You are a scientist. I want you to follow the teachings provided your son. Study along with him. Learn the facts of our science and finally details of the crisis that faces humanity. If you are not convinced by then, perhaps the Council which controls these matters will bow to your possession, though, frankly, I doubt it. Walt is too important to us.”

“But how can you take any of these children without causing pain? How many parents are willing to see them taken away forever? You can’t just take them away and leave a vacuum where they have been!”

“No, we don’t do that.” Rogers hesitated a moment, then he stepped to a door and called to someone. He sat down again. “We do not simply yank an individual out of his environment and leave a vacuum. That would cause too much disruption of your society considering the numbers we have taken. It would lead to too much pain.”

At that moment a figure moved into the room from the doorway through which Rogers had called.

“Walt!” Starbrook rose in amazement. “I didn’t know you were here!” But the boy did not answer, or even look at Starbrook with any recognition.

“He is not finished,” Rogers explained.

“What do you mean?” Starbrook saw now the empty expression on the boy’s face, repulsive in its vacuousness. Terror seized him and he staggered back into the chair from, which he had risen.

“When we take someone, we provide a substitute to insert in their environment,” said Rogers. “We create a homolog such as this and make the substitution without the knowledge of anyone except the one who joins us.”

Starbrook’s horror mounted. “You expect to take Walt and leave us this—this monster!”

Sudden, terrible pain crossed the boy’s face and Rogers rose with a snarl of rage. He led the boy out of the room and returned.

“Starbrook! You’re supposed to be a scientist. Act like one!”

“I’m Walt’s father first. You could hardly expect me to give up my son and accept that—thing of yours as a substitute!”

“I suppose I was stupid to think that you could view this matter with any degree of objectivity. We should have simply made the substitution without your knowledge as we have done in all other cases.”

“Do you think you could have done that without our knowing your homolog wasn’t our son?”

“Of course. It has been done in thousands of other cases. This homolog is your son in every respect—or will be when he is completed. Every emotional pattern, memory, instinct, and physical form and composition that goes into your son’s makeup is being duplicated. With the exception, of course, of the creative mutations which set Walt apart from other men, and which cannot be duplicated in homolog. The homolog will fill Walt’s place in life in every respect. He will grow and develop and respond to his environment in a manner parallel to that of Walt. He can live a normal, useful life. He can marry, though not reproduce. He has an intelligence comparable to Walt’s and will be professionally superior. If you love him or hurt him, if you make him happy or sad, you are doing it to Walt. He is Walt. His emotions and feelings are simply transplants, so to speak, of those of your son. That is why you hurt him so terribly just now when you despised him as a monstrosity. What would Walt’s reaction be if you called him that? It will take considerable effort to eradicate that painful experience from the homolog mind.”

Abruptly, Rogers rose. “You may have time to think it over. Our final course of action will be decided by the Council. I am only a technical advisor in these matters, but I can tell you that you will be doing yourself, your son, and the human race a great service if you try to comprehend the things you have seen and heard; conversely, a great disservice.”

Rogers hesitated. “Perhaps the easiest solution would be for you to come here. It might be arranged since you have the one essential mutation. You could be useful as a technician. A homolog could, of course, be provided to take up the life you leave.”

Starbrook, from where he sat, could see the distant view of the strange valley through a window across the room. It bespoke of serenity and peacefulness such as he had not known, and there was evidence of science here such as he had not dreamed of. But he had no purpose here. The invitation was a mere concession to the accident of nature that had granted him his single, useless mutation.

As for leaving Rose—

“Thanks,” he said, “but, no.”

Rogers nodded and escorted him back to Miss Edythe’s office. She was disappointed when Starbrook told her what had happened.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she said, “but the world of mutants is a disappointing place, as I told you before. I suppose we won’t be seeing you again, but we’ll look forward to the visits of your son. Would you care to take along a couple of new volumes for him?”

The world seemed to have taken on a curiously unreal quality to Starbrook as he left the building and got into his car. He drove mechanically through the streets and along the highway that led to the outskirts of the city where the Bradford Electronics plant was located.

There, he secluded himself in his office with orders to his secretary to keep everyone else out for a while. He leaned back in his chair. Through the window he could see the hazy, disordered landscape of the city, just as through that other window only, a few moments ago he had seen the peaceful scene out of that unknown era of the future.

He had not illusions about the reality of that strange vision. The experience carried its own conviction. He knew that he had seen the miracle of a scene from the future, and had spoken to men whose lives lay far ahead of his in the time continuum.

His mind speculated at the fringes of his experience, ever trying to dodge the core of it. But at last he forced himself to face it.

Walt.

He tried to submerge the subjective factors in his mind and consider the things he’d heard as a scientist should consider them. He didn’t doubt the truth of Rogers’ statements—and when he once admitted that to himself he was left helpless.

Walt would go.

He would carry forward the mutations which he bore so that the race might profit.

It was as simple as that, and there was no alternative.

But that conclusion released the flood of subjective opposition that his mind had held in check. Were a man’s feelings for his son to be wholly ignored? They weren’t, he reflected bitterly. They were supposed to be expended upon some grisly automaton shape in the image of his son. Surely Rogers would destroy the thing after he’d seen Starbrooks’ reaction to it.

And Rose.

Up to now he’d left her reactions out of his thoughts. She was no scientist. She had never pretended to understand the objective, selfless attitudes of science. Surely she would not be able to do so in this. It would be impossible to convince her that Walt’s destiny lay with the mutants of a future age.

And what of Walt himself?

Soon he would be faced with full understanding of the thing that he was and his possibilities. Would he choose to go with the mutants?

There was little doubt that he would. The genius of the boy’s mind was tempered with an emotional stability that would let him see the problem whole, that would let him evaluate it without fear and personal prejudice—as Starbrook knew that he should be doing, himself.

They could, of course, forbid his further study of the books of the Children’s Room. They could enforce their will upon him by sheer physical means.

And for the rest of his life he would hate them with an untranscended bitterness. In any profession he undertook he would be taunted by the incubus of longing for lost worlds and vanished dreams. And with it would ride hate—hate and revulsion for the thing that his parents had done.

Starbrook sighed wearily and put away that bitter vision. He forced himself to recognize that he was completely helpless. The decision lay not with him, but with Walt.

He’d have to tell Rose, somehow, he thought. That was the hardest part of all. Harder still, because she could not comprehend the mutant language or see that world of the future. All of it would have to be understood only as he could tell it.

For a while he tried futilely to dispose of some of the work on his desk. It was no use. He cleared it off and gave necessary instructions to his secretary, telling her he’d be back in the morning.

When he reached home, Rose met him in the front hall, her face reflecting her startled surprise.

“Bill! What are you doing home at this time? Nothing’s wrong—”

“Of course not, darling.” He lifted her with his hands on her waist. “Just got lonesome for home cooking for lunch. What’s on?”

“Bill, you silly. There’s nothing on—nothing that would satisfy your gourmandizing. Some fruit salad, sandwiches—for me and Walt.”

“Swell. Lead me to it.”

It isn’t going over, he thought. This isn’t the right approach. But how can I say it? What am I going to tell her—

After lunch, he led her into the living room and drew her down beside him on the sofa.

“Bill, what’s wrong? Something is on your mind.”

He smiled uncertainly. “Yes. There is something special I want to tell you, something I’ve got to make you understand—about Walt.”

“Walt! What has happened—?”

“Something good. It’s happened, or is happening, and he’s going to need all our help and understanding. Darling, do you know what a mutant is?”

Rose furrowed her brow. “I remember something about them in college biology. Six legged calves, fruit flies with extra wings—”

“Yes, but that’s the wrong kind. Every improvement in living creatures from the dawn of life has come about through mutations, changes in characteristics of offspring from those of the parents. Rose, Walt is a mutant.”

Uncertain disbelief, shock, and revulsion moved in waves across her face. Then slowly, Bill Starbrook began his story. He explained about the books, the Children’s Room, and his own experiences there. He told of the mutant colony and their struggle to step up the evolutionary rate of the human race to keep from being swept aside and exploited by more rapidly advancing races. Then he told of the need of Walt’s potentialities in that struggle.

When he was finished, Rose was sitting still as ice, her face expressionless. When he touched her hand, it was cold.

“You can’t expect me to believe such a story,” she said at last. “It isn’t true. It couldn’t possibly be true. Things like that don’t happen.”

“They have happened,” Starbrook pointed out, “perhaps thousands of times in our own generation. It is only by accident that I found out about this instead of Walt being swept away without our knowledge.”

“This must be some kind of a crazy joke, Bill. You can’t have believed a word you’ve said. Why are you telling me this?”

“There are the books—”

“Those books. Yes. Ever since Walt first brought them home I’ve felt their evil influence. Why, no one can even read them. The characters are like cabalistic scribbling of ancient spells and mysticisms. I can believe almost that they are responsible for such fantasies as you have described—in your minds.”

“Rose.” And suddenly Starbrook knew it was no use, but he went on. “Walt and I can read those books. To us, the characters make sense—because we have the mutations that enable us to read them.”

“Please promise me you won’t let Walt bring any more of them to the house. Whatever it is that has seized his imagination—and yours—will gradually be forgotten if he doesn’t have them around.”

Starbrook kept silent. As he looked into Rose’s eyes he knew she would never believe this thing,. Not until it was too late, anyway—

“I’ll see what I can do with Walt,” he said wearily, “We can’t suddenly force him to avoid the books. He would read them in the library at any cost. But I promise I’ll watch him and keep him from being hurt by them.”

He got into the car again and drove away. His disappointment hung like a pall over everything, but he had not expected more, he told himself. He could not expect Rose to act differently. Her utterly conventional mind with its lack of scientific training was a narrow highway over which such ponderous vehicles of revelation could never pass.

Suddenly, he realized he had no destination. He didn’t want to go back to the office. He glanced down at his briefcase in which lay the books Miss Edythe had given him for Walt, He’d forgotten to take them to him. He turned downtown and went into the reading room of the public library. There, he began studying the new volumes.

With what was almost a pathetic eagerness now, he wanted to devour every concept of the mutants’ colony which he could obtain. He wanted to know that world in which Walt was going to live in all the detail he could.

With somewhat of a shock he realized he was now thinking in terms of Walt’s going as a foregone conclusion. Now he wanted to preserve for himself every common facet of experience that would link them after Walt had passed irrevocably through time and space to a far future.

He found the present volumes suddenly different from those that Walt had previously been given. The pretense of fiction and fairy tales was gone. The information being given now was straight stuff. So abstruse was it that Starbrook wondered how Walt could possibly absorb it, but he felt certain that the mutants had made no mistake. They knew what they were doing.

There began to appear new bits of information that he knew was not a part of Earth’s science in this age. As he read on, he moved farther and farther into the difficult unknown of the mutants’ science.

Slowly, his scientific objectivity began to predominate the mixture of feelings within him. Here was material that would be of inestimable value to his own age. It would be tragic to let it get away without making some attempt to preserve it. He wondered if the mutants would have any objection to that. Evidently not, since Rogers knew he had free access to everything that Walt obtained from the library, and had even advised him to go along with Walt.

He decided to go back to the plant after all. It was late and near quitting time when he arrived, but the photo lab was still open. He took one of the books and gave it to Joe Copper, the photo technician.

“How soon can you shoot the whole thing? Photostats of each page, say three copies.”

The technician frowned as he glanced at the unintelligible pages. “What the devil—?” Then he glanced at Starbrook’s face.

“We can get it out tomorrow,” he said, quickly, “if it’s that much of a rush job,’ he said. “We’ve just finished up the instruction book work on that BC-124A set—”

“Good. I’ll be around tomorrow for it—and have some more for you.”

When he returned home neither he nor Rose made any mention of the incident of the afternoon. Together they went up to Walt’s room to see how he was. His cold was better and he was lying impatiently reading one of the mutants’ books.

Rose’s face showed only a flicker of emotion as she saw the book, then she returned the smile that Walt gave them.

“Gee, Dad, I thought you were never going to get home. Mom says you were here for lunch and never came up to see a guy flat on his back. What kind of business is that?”

Starbrook ruffled his hair. “Very urgent business or I’d have come up. How’re your viruses—or what the devil do you call more than one of the bugs—”

“They find me pretty poisonous. I’ll be up tomorrow.”

“Not quite,” laughed Rose.

“How about us working on our chess game while Mom gets supper, Dad? We ought to have time for a couple of moves. O.K. Mom?”

“Sure. You go right ahead. I’ll bring yours on a tray.”

When Rose was gone, Walt looked at the briefcase that Starbrook still held. “Did you bring some more books for me?”

Starbrook nodded. He drew out the first of the two that Miss Edythe had given him. “We’ve got to do something about keeping these under cover from now on. They worry your mother. She’s afraid of their influence. She can’t understand what you or I can comprehend in them. I tried to tell her a little about them this afternoon. That’s what I came home for. It’s hopeless. She wants you to get rid of them. You’ll have to do that or else study them under cover.”

For a moment Walt’s young face seemed whiter against the pillow and at last he shook his head. “I can’t do either. I can’t stop until I know where this is leading. And one of the things I need most is Mom’s understanding of it. Don’t you understand?”

“Yes—I do, but I don’t know what you can do about it.”

“Why couldn’t I teach her to read these books? It seems to me that this language or whatever it is should be so simple to understand. Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know. I had never thought of that. Why don’t you see?”

Surely it would be worth a try, Starbrook thought. He had never supposed that it would be possible for anyone not possessing the particular mutation to be able to read the language. But it was worth hoping for. Walt needed all the understanding he could get. It was beginning to tell on the boy’s face, the uncertainty and the glimpsing of new worlds that were terrifying in their impact upon his mind. His yearning and his gift of understanding went out towards his son, but there was so little that was tangible that he could do. He wondered what would happen when the full impact of knowledge of what he was expected to do came to him. But Starbrook had no thought that Walt would turn down the opportunity. In spite of the terrifying aspects of it, Walt would leap at the chance to join the mutants. There was no doubt of that. If only Rose could come to some understanding before it happened—

“Try it tomorrow,” said Starbrook suddenly. “Try to get your mother interested in learning the language of the books.”

During the forenoon of the following day, Starbrook was forced to return his attention to his work at the plant. Development on a police transceiver was in a boggle, and he spent the whole morning in the lab working with the engineers on it. By early afternoon he broke away long enough to go down to the photo lab.

“Got my stuff ready?” he asked Joe Coppers. “Here’s another one for you.”

“I hope you and your Chinese friends know what this is all about,” grinned the technician. He handed. Starbrook the thick piles of photostats.

Starbrook looked at them. “This isn’t the stuff I gave you!”

Joe Coppers looked, startled. “Sure it is. Here’s your original. Same stuff. What’s the matter—?”

Starbrook continued to stare at the photostats—and at the original copy. Then he knew what the trouble was. The photostats were absolutely unintelligible to him. Only the original books provided the proper stimuli for his senses. There was something beside the mere form of the symbols—something in the very materials of the book itself.

Slowly, he picked up the books and nodded towards the pile of photostats. “Toss that junk away, Joe. I was wrong. There won’t be any more. This stuff won’t photograph.”

The technician gaped as Starbrook walked out. After the door closed, he swore volubly.

In his office once more, Starbrook faced the problem that the only way to record the material he wanted to preserve would be for him to read it aloud. He ordered up one of the long time magnetic recorders which would run a full day without attention. It would take endless hours of his time. Perhaps he could get Walt to do some of it after the boy was a little farther along.

He began the long task with the volumes at hand and worked until long after everyone else had gone. He called Rose and told her he’d be late. It was after eleven that night when he finally decided to quit and go home.

He expected the lights to be out in the house. Walt would be asleep, and Rose always went to bed early when she was alone. But when he drove in the driveway the front of the house was ablaze with light.

As he entered the front door, Rose looked up. With somewhat of a start, Starbrook noticed she had one of the mutants’ books on her lap.

She saw his glance go towards it at once.

“I’m afraid, Bill,” she said in a thin, fear ridden voice. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”

“Rose—!”

“Walt wanted to try to teach me to read these books. Just to humor him I let him and I found out that I can learn it. Already I can pick out words and sentences, even whole paragraphs here and there. Oh, Bill, I don’t want to read it!”

“But you must—now that you know you can,” he said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded, her face tight with terror. “That story you told me yesterday. It can’t be true—!”

“Please, Rose.” He sat down beside her and tightened his arm around her shoulders. “We’ve got to realize that we’ve had a very wonderful privilege in knowing Walt—in bringing him into the world, because he’s going to do something wonderful for all of mankind.”

“I just can’t think of it that way. I just can’t. He’s my baby.”

“Yeah,” said Starbrook thickly. “He’s mine, too—”

He wondered how long it would be now. Walt’s cold was soon better and he returned to school. He brought home new books regularly from the Children’s Room, at the rate which the mutants allowed.

Starbrook labored fiercely to keep up with Walt’s speed in understanding the new science revealed in tantalizing snatches and mere introductory expositions. He had to depend now on Walt’s interpretations to a great extent and the work of transcribing the information to the recorders went slowly, even with Walt’s assistance in the reading and segregation of material.

In growing tension, Starbrook began to greet each day somehow as if it were the last he would ever know. He tried to suck the essence of living from each passing moment, for he knew that almost any time now the mutants would reveal their purposes to Walt and claim him for their own. And in that moment something of Starbrook would be eternally dead.

His admiration for Rose increased as she continued doggedly her study of the mutant language. It had seemed easy for her at first, but now it became apparent that she would never get past the first volumes in which the situation of the mutants scattered throughout the Earth was presented in fantasy and allegory.

But Starbrook was not prepared for the change which was becoming more apparent in Rose day by day. The terror was slowly giving way to a strange serenity, almost a resignation that was in itself somehow frightening to Starbrook. It seemed as if she had found some secret of her own in those pages, which neither he nor Walt had discovered.

He wanted to ask her about it, but he knew that when this new feeling came to a focus she’d tell him.

She did. It was just two weeks after Walt had started back to school. They were sitting in the early twilight on the front steps watching Walt riding away on his bicycle to join the baseball game in the park two blocks away.

“It will be lonesome,” said Rose suddenly, “but there’ll be happiness in memory.”

Rose!

“It seems like I’ve found out just this moment what those stories in your mutants’ books have been saying all this time. I’ve read them over and over, and I can’t go beyond the stories, but I understand them now.”

“What do you understand?” said Starbrook.

“I understand that Walt is different. I think I’ve always known it, really. Not just his high intelligence, but other things, too. I understand now that he is one of the lonely men whom the book has been sent into the world to gather. I know that unless he goes with his own kind he’ll be forever lonely and his life will be wasted. I wouldn’t want that, no matter what the pain of sending him away might be.”

“The—story—convinced you of that?”

Starbrook pondered the semantic power of the mutant language. What secrets lay behind its powers to shape the human will to the wishes of the writers might never be known, but he knew there was a vast science evident here that was hardly dreamed of in his age. Semantics that could reduce all Rose’s fears to a calm serenity and persuade her that her only child should be sacrificed to the unknown future of the race. There was no understanding such powers yet—

He said, “It will be easier on Walt when he knows, now that you are willing for him to pursue his own destiny.”

“We’ve had him for ten happy years. It’s been a lot. When will they tell him?”

“I don’t know. Whenever they think he’s ready. It might be any day now.”

Starbrook had told himself that he was prepared, but when the moment came he knew that he could never have been equipped to accept the fact unemotionally.

It was the very next day when he came home from the plant that he found Rose and Walt together in the living room. Something went dead within him at the sight of their white faces. They had both been crying.

“They told me today,” said Walt without waiting for him to speak. “They told me what you already knew all the time.”

Starbrook fought down the tight swelling in his throat. “Yes, I knew. I’ve been waiting for you to become ready.”

“But you’re not going?” Walt looked in agonized despair from his father to his mother and back again. “Somehow I’d always thought because you could read them, too—that you were like me—”

Starbrook shook his head and smiled wanly. ‘No. I’m just a sort of freak that they’ve never run into before. I’m no good to them, so I won’t be going. Besides, your mother will need me—”

“I’ll miss you—!” Tears sprang again into his reddened eyes.

“You won’t be lonely,” said Starbrook with a calm that surprised himself. “That’s why you’re going away. If you stayed here you would be the loneliest of men because you have a thousand talents and abilities that would only be smothered and subdued. You’d be misunderstood, despised for your superior attributes and your whole life would be bitter. It will be far better where you are going. They will understand you and will be your own kind.”

“Yes, I know all that,” said Walt thinly, “—but I’ll still be lonely for you—”

It would pass, Starbrook thought. It had to pass. In the end it would be the best. He knew that what he had said was true.

“You don’t have to go—” he said.

“Oh, but I do! It’s just kind of hard right now—”

That’s what Starbrook wanted to be sure of. He smiled approvingly. “Do you know when?”

“Right away. Tonight!”

“Tonight!” All Starbrook’s defenses seemed to collapse before that single word.

“In less than a couple of hours from now. Some emergency has come up. I don’t know what, exactly. They’ve got to move the Children’s Room to some other age right away—something about picking up an important mutant who is about to be destroyed in some future time. They’re holding the movement now just for me.”

“Then there’s time for dinner together,” said Starbrook. “Let’s have it a time to remember.”

“It’s all ready,” said Rose, drying her eyes. “We were waiting for you.”

It was a time to remember—and a time for remembering. They went back and picked out the gems from the thousand moments of happiness they had known together and touched them again, fondling them, hugging them close in their memories.

And swiftly the moments passed until there were no more left.

Walt glanced at the clock. “I’ve got to be going.”

They got into the car and Starbrook drove slowly away from the curb. With each new moment it seemed as if the impact of realization came all over again—the realization that Walt would not be riding back this way with them. These houses and this street, those friends who were waving to Walt from across the way, none of them would ever know his presence again. And suddenly, Starbrook wondered how his absence would be explained—

Sounds all about them seemed to be suppressed as if it were a dream and the car was floating soundlessly through space. Almost as if without Starbrook’s conscious direction it approached the college campus and came to a halt before the library where lights were visible in the main reading room.

“Maybe you won’t want to come in,” said Walt hesitantly.

“Of course we will,” said Rose in a steady voice.

Starbrook remembered that she had never seen an entry into the Children’s Room. He wondered how it would appear to her.

With Walt between them they walked slowly towards the building.

“Gee, Dad,” said Walt suddenly. “I forgot to put my bike up. It looks like rain. Will you put it away for me?”

“Yeah. Yeah—sure—”

The futility of that impulsive request washed over them in a suffocating wave of desolation. Silently, they mounted the steps and entered the foyer.

“It’s here.” Starbrook touched his wife’s hand.

“Where? I don’t see anything. But, of course—’

He pointed to the inscription over the door.

She shook her head. “I can’t quite make it out. That blank wall, Bill! How can there be a door there that I can’t see—?”

Some of the old fear was returning to her eyes.

“It’s there. Walt’s going towards it, now. Perhaps he’ll disappear to your eyes.”

The boy turned for one final, backward glance. He smiled warmly and confidently and held up a hand. Then he walked on into the room.

Rose gave a little cry as he vanished from her sight. “Bill—can you see him? Where did he go?”

“He’s right there, darling. He’s talking to Miss Edythe and Dr. Rogers. There are a lot of the other boys in there, too. There’s a Chinese boy and some that are European. This library must have doors into all the world.”

“What’s Walt doing now?”

“Just waiting. Dr. Rogers has his arm around his shoulders. He looks happy, darling. He is happy. This is the way it should be.”

Suddenly, while he spoke, the doorway into the Children’s Room seemed to grow milky. It wavered and blurred as if his vision were failing. Impulsively, he took a step forward and waved. He glimpsed Walt’s face, smiling and joyous, and his hand waving in farewell.

“He’s gone.”

Rose crumpled against him. Her face buried in his shoulder and she stood there sobbing uncontrollably for a moment. Then at last she raised, her head and looked at Starbrook. Her eyes were shining in spite of the longing in them.

“I’m sorry, Bill. I just couldn’t help that one.”

“Shall we go back, now?”

They started down the steps as the light drizzle began to fall.

“It’s raining,” said Rose. “And Walt’s bike is still out. You mustn’t forget to bring it in for him.”

Yes, Starbrook thought. I mustn’t forget that. It’s the last thing I can ever do for him.

He glanced towards the curb, at their car which they had left empty. With a start, he realized it wasn’t empty now. There was a figure in the back seat, a face watching them through the window.

Rose saw it, too, and cried out in momentary fright.

A chill of terror swept through Starbrook.

The homolog.

He had forgotten it. He had supposed that Rogers had destroyed it because he’d said they wouldn’t want it.

He closed his eyes a moment and prayed silently that this nightmare monster might vanish, this parody of Walt—

It was looking at them with Walt’s face, Walt’s eyes, and Walt’s smile was upon its lips.

And it called to them.

Walt’s voice.

“I hurried and got my books. I thought you wanted to get back home right away. Let’s hurry now, because I left my bike out in the rain.”

The hard knot within Starbrook seemed to soften. This was not the staring, empty face he had seen in Rogers’ laboratory that day. He remembered how Rogers had warned him that it hadn’t been completed. When it was, he’d said it would be every feeling, every emotion, every memory that had been Walt. It would react in every way exactly as Walt would have reacted.

And Rose had not seen the homolog before its completion. Something of that first shock was leaving her face as she recognized what it was. She moved forward slowly.

“It’s Walt,” she said in a half whisper. “It’s everything of Walt that could have been ours anyway. And I thought it would be some crude mechanical thing from what you said. Oh, darling, they’ve taken their mutant and given our son back to us!”

Semantic control—wish fulfillment—whatever it was, Starbrook thought, the Rose who hadn’t read the mutants’ books would not have accepted the homolog so readily.

And yet—perhaps it was some influence they’d exercised over him, too—why not? Wasn’t the homolog everything that Walt had been? The exact pattern of his instincts, reactions, emotions, memories. What else was there that constituted a human being?

Even the question of identity seemed to diminish as he thought of that last vision of Walt standing content and happy amid the other mutants about to begin their long journey.

. The homolog got out of the car. He ran towards them as they moved slowly towards it.

“What’s the matter? Mother—Dad, you look so strange. Is anything wrong?”

Starbrook smiled. “Not a thing in the world—son. Your mother and I were just thinking how lucky we are—in a lot of ways. Come on, we’d better beat it home and get that bike in out of the rain.”

SIDETRACK IN TIME, by William P. McGivern

First published in the July 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.

Philip Kingley’s hand was moist as it closed over the cold butt of the automatic that nestled in the flap pocket of his lab jacket. He swallowed nervously and licked his dry lips. Everything was ready. The old man was washing his hands in the next room and in a few seconds he would step back into the laboratory, muttering absent-mindedly to himself and peering near-sightedly about with bright blue eyes as he always did.

Then—raise the gun quickly and fire and it would be all over!

Kingley knew there was nothing to worry about but he wished the cold tight knot in his stomach would stop bothering him. He wiped his free hand across his damp forehead and then clenched it fiercely and jammed it into his trouser pocket to keep it from shaking. “Well, well,” a dry, old voice sounded behind him, “you look as pale as a ghost. Matter? Trip tomorrow got you scared?”

Kingley wheeled at the sound of Professor Newton’s voice, his heartbeats thudding frantically against his ribs. The old man was muttering to himself and his bright blue eyes were peering uncertainly about the lab.

“Where in thunder’d I leave my glasses, Phil?” Kingley heard him mutter. “Can’t find a blasted thing when you need—ups.” He found them on his forehead and adjusted them over his eyes, harrumphing noisily all the time.

Kingley’s hand tightened on the gun in his pocket. With his eye he selected a spot in the center of Professor Newton’s wrinkled forehead. He drew the gun half clear of the pocket flap, waited his chance.

“Great thing our trip,” the Professor was mumbling. “Ought to be proud of ourselves, eh? First humans to travel through time and pierce the veil of the future. Yessir, a great thing.”

Kingley tried to pull the gun then but his muscles refused to obey the desperate command of his brain. He slumped suddenly against the lab bench his chest heaving like a bellows, his heart hammering furiously.

It was no use. He couldn’t commit murder. Not cold-blooded, deliberate murder. The gun slid back into his pocket. He couldn’t kill this way—but—already his mind was exploring another infinitely simpler and more subtle plan that had just occurred to him.

“S’matter?” the Professor asked grumpily. “Sick? Snap out of it, ’cause”—he paused to cackle—“we can’t take any sick people into the future.”

“No,” Kingley said weakly, “we can’t.” He watched the old man puttering about the lab bench and his lips parted in a triumphant smirk.

IT was so simple. It was surprising that it hadn’t occurred to him before this.

He and Professor Newton were testing the Professor’s time machine tomorrow. The machine worked—they had sent it into time by itself—but this was the first passenger trip. If they traveled, say, a thousand years into the future, what was to prevent him from leaving the Professor stranded there and return himself to the present? Then with the Professor out of the way the time machine would be his exclusive property, a source of limitless wealth and power.

It wouldn’t be necessary to kill the Professor then, merely strand him in time, and thus eliminate him forever from the present.

Kingley’s grin widened as his eyes followed the bent old figure of the Professor as he puttered around the lab equipment. Their time trip tomorrow would be a one way trip to oblivion for the old coot.

“Can’t wait,” he heard the old man mutter, “to see, really see the future.”

Kingley smiled.

“No rush,” he thought to himself. “You’re going to be there a long, long time.”

* * * *

“Ready?” snapped Professor Newton, his old voice trembly with suppressed excitement.

“All set,” Kingley answered.

It was the following day. They were seated inside the time machine on the leather tractor seats provided for that purpose. Around them, circling them like a cage, gleamed the shimmering contours of the time machine, undulating weirdly, as if the silvery bars were twisting and bending from one dimension to another.

The Professor’s hand moved to a sliding bar that governed the entropy reduction apparatus on the machine, then he turned and nodded briefly to Kingley. His other hand rested on a bar, calibrated with time units. Days, months, years, were marked above small levers and another bar, fitted above this one was marked with the smaller time units of seconds, minutes, hours.

The Professor’s hand moved a lever and suddenly Kingley felt an amazing sensation. It was if his body had suddenly developed a fluid constituency and was twisting and bending and undulating in accordance with the silver bars of the machine. For an instant he tried to yell, but then the familiar lab, visible through the bars of the machine, vanished abruptly and he seemed to be hurtling at express train speed down a black corridor that seemed, somehow to be twisting and bending before him.

How long this sensation lasted he couldn’t tell, but after what seemed an interminable period it ceased, almost imperceptively at first and then with a swift abruptness that brought the blood to his temples in a dizzying rush.

The shimmering, undulating bars of the time cage gradually steadied slightly and Kingley was able to see a broad, vista extending before them.

The Professor was nudging him.

“All right, all right,” the old voice cracked in his ear. “We’re here. Get out, get out. Let’s look around.”

Kingley climbed out of the cramped quarters and peered about, his curiosity for the moment transcending the real purpose of his trip.

It was a barren, rock-blighted scene that met their eyes. As far as they could see mighty boulders were piled one upon the other and everything was quiet; frighteningly quiet.

“H-how far are we?” Kingley asked.

“Five thousand years into the future,” the old Professor said casually. “If there’s any humans, they must be occupying another part of the globe.”

Kingley clenched his fists nervously as the Professor moved away from the shimmering machine to inspect a peculiarly colored piece of slate. He was bending over, his back to Kingley, inches away from a fissure in the rock that dropped into a shallow valley.

Kingley stepped behind him, noiselessly, carefully. This was his chance. He’d never get a better one. A slight shove with his hand…

His hand reached out, and then the Professor turned.

“Say look—” his voice trailed off as he took in Kingley’s tense, crouched figure. His eyes widened and his mouth opened but it was too late to cry out. Kingley’s hand collided with his frail shoulder. The old man staggered back a step and crashed downward into the shallow gully.

Kingley watched triumphantly as the Professor slid down the rough shale siding, clawing frantically with his hands and feet until he stopped at the base of the rock, a cloud of rock dust rising about his frail, crumpled old figure.

Then Kingley wheeled and stepped into the time machine. He grinned exultantly as he set the devices and levers, his hands working swiftly, automatically. But even in his haste he did not forget the primary law of time travel which the Professor had drummed into his head. Never return to the same second in time from which the trip originated. Wouldn’t do to get caught in a time groove at this stage in the game.

He heard the Professor’s thin, cracked voice shouting frantically and he heard a scuffling, scratching sound as the old man attempted vainly to scramble to the top of the ledge.

Kingley’s grin split wider as he listened to these sounds.

The twisting tunnel of blackness stretched before him then, endlessly, infinitely mysterious. Through its black unknown he rushed, backward, backward into the time that was past.

As before, the sensation departed slowly at first and then with a dizzying rush of speed. The silvery shimmer of the bars was once again visible and through their glittering undulation he glimpsed the familiar benches and equipment of Professor Newton’s laboratory.

He scrambled out of the machine, the delirious feeling of success and power coursing through his veins like strong drink. His eyes traveled about the laboratory, slowly, gloatingly. All of it his. The equipment, the formulas and most important of all—the time machine.

The Professor was removed from the scene forever. Kingley thought of the old man wandering dazedly about, five thousand years in the future and he laughed shrilly. If any snooper got suspicious—why let them snoop. What could they prove without a body?

His possessive gaze rested on the time machine and he felt himself trembling with anticipatory greed. The money, the power, the position that it would give him were beyond the limits of imagination. Millions—

“Well, well,” a horribly familiar voice blasted into his thoughts, “you look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

Kingley wheeled, the cold crushing hand of fear closing over his heart.

Professor Newton stood in the doorway!

FOR a frozen instant Kingley stared into the Professor’s bright blue eyes and then he staggered back, his jaw hanging slack, an inarticulate bleat welling hysterically from his throat. Somehow—the thought pounded with horrible force into his frenzied brain—the old man had followed him back from time. Followed him from the future to point the finger of guilt at him. Now he was moving toward him.

Kingley’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

“For God’s sake,” he tried to scream, “Keep away from me, do y’ hear? You can’t be here, you’re not here. Keep away from me.”

Instinctively his hand slipped into his pocket, jerked out the automatic. The muscles in his arm refused to lift the gun shoulder high. His breath hissed through his teeth in great choking sobs as he backed away from the Professor. He couldn’t kill the old man. No one could. He had gone five thousand years into the future to get rid of him, but like some horrible nemesis the old Professor had tracked him back across the bridgeless gulf of Time.

Suddenly strength flowed into his arm and he raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The blasting report reverberated through the lab and Kingley never heard the old Professor say: “Trip tomorrow got you scared?” Nor would Kingley ever know that in his haste to return to the Present, he had selected the day before he and Professor Newton started for the Future.

He didn’t even see the figure behind him. The figure to which Professor Newton now said, his voice unmoved by the tragedy that had taken place before him:

“Where in thunder’d I leave my glasses, Phil?”

GEORGE ALL THE WAY, by Richard Wilson

Even before the shimmering stopped, Bill Marcer saw that he was being surrounded. He felt a trifle uneasy, though the phlutters had assured him there would be no danger.

Abruptly the shimmering was gone and Marcer seemed to feel the last of his personal molecules slip back into place as the Phleger effect faded. He wriggled his shoulders, threw them back, filled his chest and forced a smile.

“Greetings,” he said to the crowd, pivoting to address as many as possible from the railed platform. “I, Billings Marcer, bring you greetings from the twentieth century” No one had told him to make a speech, but he thought it would be appropriate.

One of the men of the future stepped forward, smiling formally. He was dressed in pantaloons and a skirt, or kilt, and halter top, something like a Macedonian dancer, or maybe a Scot.

“Hi,” this individual said, speaking slowly and distinctly, as if to a foreigner. “Welcome to twenty-one seventy-seven. I’m Jeems Kenth to be your guide. Or would you prefer to make your double O solo?”

“Double o solo?” Bill Marcer repeated. “You mean go around by myself?”

“Oskie-wow-wow,” another pantalooned man said. “You win the sixty-four thousands.” He pronounced each syllable with care.

“What?”

“You did say twentieth century?” the first futureman, Jeems Kenth, asked. He looked anxious.

“Yes.”

“Then everything’s jake,” he said with a visible return of his assurance. “We’ve straightened up and are flying right. Ish-kabibble?”

“On the beam,” his fellow futureman agreed. “Voot!”

“The latter part of the twentieth century,” Marcer said.

It dawned on him that these people, in preparation for his visit, had been studying the folk expressions of his time, or what they thought was his time.

“The latter part?” Jeems Kenth looked disappointed. “Then we have not mastered your language? We are off the beam and icing up?”

“Not at all,” Marcer said quickly. As unofficial ambassador from 1977, he had to be diplomatic. “You’re right in the groove. Reet. Cooking on the front burner, with gas.” He wasn’t fluent in the embarrassing slang of his father’s and grandfather’s time, but he thought he could get by. “Shut my mouth,” he added as he thought of another one.

“Fan my brow!” Kenth said delightedly. “The kid’s okay!”

“Terrif!” added his friend, who identified himself as Aces Jack. “Slip us some skin.”

“Natch,” said Marcer. He got down from the platform and shook hands all around, murmuring “Real George” or “Howza boy?” as he was introduced to Sperris Theo, Stands Thom, Lucez Hank, Wobanx Joce and Jenfooz Ed.

“What say we tie on the feedbag while we chew the rag?” suggested Jenfooz Ed, who was heavy and hearty. “Something for the inner man?”

“Fine,” said Bill Marcer. “That’d be the most, I mean.”

He saw that he had materialized in a public square and that the crowd around him was holding up traffic. Wildly colored three-wheeled vehicles waited calmly for the obstruction to clear, without a honk out of them. But now a uniformed man made his way through the crowd, saying: “Unclutter. Decong.”

Aces Jack went to meet him, saying: “Twonce. Wantroduce chronaut from twencent. Marcers Bill. Bill, Phoebes Dick.”

“Do,” Phoebes Dick said in the clipped speech that apparently was the proper language of 2177. He gave Marcer a brief look and turned away to Aces Jack. “Going? Must unsnarl.”

He went back to the patient traffic jam as Jenfooz Ed and Jeems Kenth led the group toward a building shaped, Marcer thought, something like a hamburger. He felt a bit hurt by Phoebes Dick’s abruptness. The man could have looked up at least one slang expression, for politeness’ sake.

Jeems Kenth seemed to sense Marcer’s disappointment. “P.D.’s a cop,” he said. “You savvy how cops are on duty. Dum-da-da-dum.”

“Check,” Marcer said. He had no idea what the musical phrase was meant to convey.

* * * *

A big table had been reserved for them at the hamburger joint, as Marcer felt obliged to call it. Bowls on the table were piled high with familiar raw fruit and unfamiliar prepared foods.

“Yes, we have no bananas,” said Lucez Hank brightly, although they had. “Pile in. Your stomach must think your throat’s been cut.”

“That’s right,” Marcer nodded agreeably. “Haven’t eaten for a couple of hundred years, come to think of it.”

Everybody laughed uproariously and for a while there was no conversation, only the sound of eating, which was done with the fingers.

As Bill Marcer chewed, he studied his hosts, thinking of their names. They had called him Marcers Bill, inverting it. Back when surnames began to be used, people took them from occupations: Miller, Goldsmith, Wheeler, Hunter. Then the sons: Robertson, son of Robert—Robert’s son. That seemed to be the style again, here in 2177. Jeems Kenth, then, had been Jeem’s Kenneth or—of course!—GM’s Kenneth.

He turned to Kenth, waving a dripless algyburger excitedly. “You’re with General Motors, aren’t you?”

Kenth beamed. “Solid, Jackson.”

Marcer turned to the man on his left. “And Jenfooz Ed. General Foods?”

“Sensash!” Ed agreed.

“And Stands Thom would be with Standard Oil, and Sperris Theo with Sperry’s, and Lucez Hank with Luce’s—publishing. Right?”

“The kid’s a wonder,” Wobanx Joce said from across the table. “Now dig me and Aces Jack.”

“Wobanx.” Marcer pondered it. “World Bank?” he guessed. They nodded in delight. “But Aces Jack? You’ve got me there, unless you’re in the playing-card business.”

Jack grinned. “Higher stakes. Try AEC.”

“Atomic Energy Commission?”

“Corporation. Defederalized.”

“Of course,” Marcer said. “Then that cop—Phoebes Dick. Could Phoebe be FBI?”

“Bull’s eye!” said Lucez Hank. “Now you level with us, Marcers Bill. What’s your line?”

“None, really. I’m what the papers call the heir to a silicone fortune. Just a playboy with a lot of money, which is why I’m here. I guess if I had any descendants, one of them might be Slix Bill. Tell me,” he said, forgetting to slang it up in his excitement, “is there anybody like that around? Could I see him?”

There was a silence that Marcer took for embarrassment. Stands Thom broke it with a laugh. “That’d be illegal, Fosdick, old boy. It’d be like wising you up to when you were going to kick the bucket. Couldn’t tip your mitt, you know.”

“It wouldn’t matter,” Marcer said. “I won’t remember any of this, anyhow. Didn’t they tell you, when they arranged my trip, that I’ll have an amnesia shot when I get back? Time travel’s still top secret in 1977.”

“Fill us in,” Jeems Kenth said. “We have the general picture, of course, but you’re a history book on legs. Give us the straight lowdown.”

Bill Marcer flicked crumbs from his algyburger into the disposal slot in the middle of the table. “Well,” he said, “time travel was a Government project till it ran into budget trouble. Budgets haven’t become obsolete, have they?”

They shook their heads, smiling ruefully.

For years, he told them, Congress had appropriated money and the top-secret Ingersoll Project had gobbled it up, without notable success.

On its best try, IP sent an expendable research worker five minutes into the future. He didn’t come back. But when the five minutes had elapsed, there he was. The intervening time simply hadn’t existed for him.

This sort of research didn’t seem productive, economically or militarily. The costs worked out to about a hundred million dollars a minute, so the House Appropriations Committee balked at voting new billions for the next year’s program. One committee member wanted to know if there wasn’t a private agency that could carry on. The Rockefellers, maybe, or the Fords. The committee counsel was instructed to look into it.

His looking produced the Phleger Foundation, consisting of the tax-free millions of a West Coast airplane manufacturer. Phleger set up his Foundation’s time division in a vast piece of property outside Los Angeles, which he’d taken over in one of his less inspired mergers. The property had been vacant for years and the chronicians swarmed in.

To the Phleger people, the fact that someone had gone five minutes into the future proved time travel practical. The principle had to be the same for five years, a jump they eventually achieved. But these were one-way trips and valuable chronicians were lost to research for whatever span of time they jumped.

Then, one historic day, a round trip was achieved. From that time on, the Foundation began to earn money faster than it could be spent. It accomplished this by making time travel a plaything of the idle rich.

Old Philip Phleger personally took charge of hawking tours to Phleger’s future among adventurous young millionaires whose current fad, motor-sledding in the Antarctic, had begun to pall.

“Have you tried phluttering?” Old Man Phleger would say. “It’s the latest thing. Certain tax advantages, too, you know.”

Bill Marcer, after Phleger’s legal section codified, his medical people examined, his psychologists analyzed, and the Old Man himself had a whirl at it, was among the first non-professionals to phlutter.

Marcer signed the check, the waiver and the medical form and climbed onto the open-railed platform in the great shed. The shimmering came, obscuring the figures of the chronicians watching him intently from their banks of machines. Things went gray, he sneezed a couple of times and, gripping the railing tightly, he phluttered into 2177.

“And here I am,” he told Jeems and Aces and Stands and the rest. “Just a playboy on a fling. It’s certainly been good of you to give up your valuable time to entertain me.”

“Not at all,” Aces Jack said pleasantly. “Don’t low-rate yourself. It takes two to tango.”

“If you mean my money and Phleger’s brains, you’re right. Well, then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see more of 2177. I’ve only got two hours.”

Jeems Kenth looked at his wristwatch.

“Why, that’s the same as mine,” Marcer said. He pushed up his sleeve to compare them. “A Hamilton.”

“An heirloom,” Kenth explained. “Been in the family for generations. My time is your time, eh, Rudy?”

Marcer laughed. “I’ve heard of Rudy Vallee, of course, but he was really before my time. You know, if you don’t mind my saying so, all these slang expressions—well, they’re a bit of a strain. We speak—spoke—pretty straight English back in 1977.”

Kenth looked hurt. “We were trying to make you feel at home. I, for one, put in many an hour at the histoviewer to learn your quaint expressions.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve offended you.”

“Forget it,” Jenfooz Ed broke in. “Sweep it under the rug. Look, fellas, our man from the past has to go back soon and we’re wasting his valuable time. And I do mean valuable, eh, Bill? I’ll bet Old Man Phleger took a stack of the green before he let you climb aboard.”

“I have some left,” Marcer grinned.

“Well, you won’t spend it here. Everything’s on the house. Now what would you like to do? How about—”

“I’d like to see what you’re doing with silicones,” Marcer interrupted. “It’s the family business, you know. I’ll probably be going into it when or if I settle down.”

“Great idea,” Aces Jack said, “but I’m afraid the slix works is pretty far out. You’d never get back in time to go back in time, if you follow me. We’ve got to get you on that platform when the gong sounds or I hate to think what’d happen to your molecules.”

“Oh?” Marcer said in alarm. “I didn’t know—”

“Never fear,” Jenfooz Ed boomed. “We’ll see that you’re de-phluttered in one piece. What I was going to say was, why don’t we give our guest a gander at the girly line?”

“Girly line?” Marcer brightened. “You mean women? Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any of your women. They’re not extinct, are they?”

“Perish forbid!” Stands Thom exclaimed. “Let’s show the young buck.”

“Bring on the girls!” cried Jenfooz Ed. “Va-va-voom!” He ran to a door on which the word Women was lettered.

“Open the door, Richard!” Aces Jack shouted to him. “Let there be titillation for our guest in his last remaining minutes!”

The door opened and Bill Marcer was indeed titillated by the bevy of near-buxom young women who emerged in a little dancing run. Lilting music from hidden speakers accompanied their entry. Each wore a differently daring costume and each danced up to him and introduced herself with a kiss and a verse.

“I’m Daysend Mae, for your hours of play,” said a red-headed charmer.

A raven-haired beauty told him: “They call me Jet; I help you forget.”

“Abandon your worry and play with Terri,” recited a striking blonde.

Marcel’s head was swimming from the subtly changing whiffs of perfume. He was laughing in delight and had difficulty puckering his lips to do justice to the variegated kisses he was receiving.

He grabbed at the fourth girl and for a delicious moment held her in his arms. This one whispered: “I’m off at six, honey. Meet me at Exit C.” She gave him a little bump with her tummy and winked as she danced away.

Before he could digest her message—she was a most appealing strawberry blonde—an auburn-haired dream was upon him, cooing: “Flee with Bea beyond the sea.” She flickered her long eyelashes against his cheek as she bestowed her kiss.

A great gong sounded just as he was puckering up for a statuesque creature whose hair he failed to notice because of her other assets. But at a gesture from Jeems Kenth, she reversed her dance and flitted away. “Sorry, big boy,” she said. “Time’s up.”

And off they went, the gorgeous lot of them, doing a little time step back through the door marked Women.

Marcer, dizzy and lipsticked, reluctantly permitted himself to be led out of the building to the platform that was to take him back to 1977.

“That was fun,” Marcer said, “but what was it? Is that the way you choose your—uh—companions in 2177?”

“One of the ways,” Sperris Theo said. “Those were the playgirls. For a more permanent alliance, there’s the mate date. We knew you wouldn’t have time for that.”

“Hated to drag you away,” Aces Jack put in, “but we can’t have your molecules congealing.”

“Been great having you,” Lucez Hank told him. “Now on your horse and awa-a-y!”

Marcer climbed up on the platform. His hosts gathered around it to shake hands. Even Phoebes Dick, holding back traffic for his departure, gave him a clipped salute.

“I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed knowing you all,” Marcer said. He searched for words. “It was the—the cat’s pajamas.” They were laughing and waving while the shimmering began.

* * * *

When the shimmering stopped, he was back in the shed. Back in the dull past of his own time, he thought, with the sweet kisses of the future still tingling his lips. In a moment, he supposed, he’d get his amnesia shot. Meanwhile, he savored his memory.

The chronicians were shouting and milling around.

“Get that curtain up!” someone seemed to be yelling.

“Throw something over those mockups,” somebody else cried, “and, for God’s sake, get out of here with those costumes. Something’s gone wrong with the shim!”

Marcer clutched the platform rail and stared. He couldn’t see too well because they had a spotlight on him and the rest of the shed was dim. But wasn’t that Wobanx Joce disappearing through a door? And Jeems Kenth crowding behind him, throwing a look of consternation over his shoulder? Kenth, the one who’d worn that “heirloom” wristwatch.

And at the other side of the big room, peeping out from behind a slab of painted scenery—wasn’t that a giggling gang of girls, among whom could be discerned Jet and Terri and Daysend Mae?

Chorus girls. Undoubtedly, for there among them was the strawberry blonde, looking boldly at him and holding up six fingers. “I’m off at six, honey,” she had told him in “2177.”

He’d been taken for a joyride into a phony future. Swindled. Bilked.

Angrily he looked around for Old Man Phleger. He didn’t see him. But there was the top “chronician,” Wagner, the chief of staff of these confidence men who had tried to rook him so expensively. Wagner, a harassed, perspiring man in a smock, was scurrying desperately from one bank of controls to another, throwing occasional hopeless glances at Marcer.

“Wagner!” Marcer said. “You crook! Wait till I get my hands on you!” He climbed over the rail.

Wagner threw out his hands appealingly. “Don’t get excited, Mr. Marcer. I know what you think, but it’s not that way at all. I mean not entirely. I can explain.”

“You’ll explain to the police,” Marcer said. “I’ve had all the explanation I need. Phleger’s future! Nothing but movie sets!”

“Please, Mr. Marcer—”

“—federal offense,” Marcer said, unheeding. “I’m sure the FBI will be interested, too. You even had the gall to hang their name on one of your actors. ‘Phoebes Dick’!”

“Now, Mr. Marcer—”

“Va-va-voom!” Marcer shouted at him. “Oh, phlut-phlut! Yes, we have no bananas! Very clever! The music goes round and round and it comes out fraud. Twenty-three skiddoo to you, kiddo. I’ll be seeing you in court.”

“Mr. Marcer, listen to me,” Wagner pleaded. “I admit we staged the whole thing. I admit it and I’ll tear up your check if you want me to. But first listen. Time travel is possible. You would have gone into the legitimate future if our machine hadn’t broken down at the last minute.”

Wagner’s earnestness was obvious.

“The machine broke down?”

Wagner wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his smock. “We didn’t want to disappoint you. Frankly, we were afraid that if we weren’t ready on time, you’d change your mind about your donation, and we needed the money. So we faked it, intending to explain later and give you a rain check.”

“A rain check?” Marcer echoed.

“Yes. When the machine is repaired, we’re prepared to send you into the legitimate future—free of charge—if you’re still interested.”

“Free?” Marcer calmed down. “Well, now.” He considered. “I guess there’s nothing to lose. I could stop payment on the check even if you didn’t tear it up.”

“We’ll tear it up. After this fiasco, we need your good will even more than your money.”

* * * *

The Phelger people fixed their machine within a week.

Bill Marcer thought it over, went back, laughed with Wagner and let his check go through. He signed a new waiver and climbed up on the railed platform.

His decision might have been influenced by the strawberry blonde, whose role in the phony follies of 2177 was the only one that really meant anything. She’d waited for him, as she had promised, at Exit C, at six.

Now the shimmering began and the figures of Wagner and the other chronicians faded.

Marcer didn’t like anything about the real future. It was chill and drizzly and he couldn’t see very far. Men in gray uniforms ringed the platform. They wouldn’t talk to him and refused to let him climb over the rail. His visit lasted only ten minutes, but it seemed an hour and he kept sneezing all the time.

He preferred the fake.

When he got back from this damp nothing of a future, he promised himself, he and the strawberry blonde were going to have a mate date.

ABSOLUTELY NO PARADOX, by Lester del Rey

The old men’s section of the Arts and Science Club was always the best ordered. The robots somehow managed to avoid clanking there; the greensward beyond the veranda was always just right, and the drinks were the best for six counties. Old Ned Brussels touched his glass to his lips appreciatively, sighed in contentment, and waited for some of the other oldsters to break the silence.

Finally, Lem Hardy took the plunge. “He did it,” he announced, referring to a conversation of weeks before. Then, at their puzzled looks, he amplified. “My grandson, damn it! He’s got a time machine—it works. Sent a cat four days up, and it came through unharmed.”

The glass fell from Old Ned’s hand, bouncing on the floor, and spilling good liquor. A robot came forward silently to clean it up, but Ned didn’t look at it. “Four days doesn’t mean a thing. Lem—is that kid planning on trying it out?”

“He’s going to try it next week.”

“Then for the Lord’s sake, stop him! Look, does it work like this?” His fingers slipped over the pencil smoothly, as they had always done when he worked, drafting robot bodies in the old days. A rude schematic seemed to grow almost instantly on the paper.

Lem took it, then stiffened suddenly. “Who told you?”

“A youngster named Pete LeFranc—and it was forty years…no, over fifty years ago. Lem, if you like your grandson, keep him out of the machine. Four days, four weeks—they don’t mean anything. Time machines don’t work, however well they seem to.”

A bustle from behind them pulled their eyes around. One of the robots was quietly restraining a nervous young man who was trying to break free and join the group. His face was tense, excited, with an odd bitter fear behind it. His words were seemingly cut out of steel. “…told me I’d find him here. Damn it…”

“Sorry, sir. You’ll have to wait.” The robot’s voice was adamant under its smoothness.

Ned grunted, and then impulse led him to look again. He’d seen the man somewhere. He hunted for it, then dismissed it, knowing that his memory was tricky these days. But he motioned the robot aside. “We don’t allow interruptions for junior members,” he told the man, letting his voice soften the words. “Still, if you want to sit down and listen—quietly—nobody’ll stop you.”

“But…”

“Quietly!” The robot stressed the word. The man looked at it, then swiveled to Ned Brussels. For a moment, the bitterness halted, as if frozen, then gave place to a sudden sharp amusement. His eyes searched Ned’s, and he nodded, dropping into a chair.

Lem took up the conversation again. “It worked. And if it works for four days, it should work for four centuries. You’re just scared of paradoxes, Ned—going back and killing your grandfather, or such rot. You’ve been reading too many stories on it.”

“Fifty years ago, Pete LeFranc said the same thing. Young man, either sit down, or get out! This is the Old Men’s section! He had answers for all the paradoxes, too—except one question.”

* * * *

Ned had been young, then, just getting started at synthanatomy drafting, and not rich enough for wine of the type Pete always kept. He sipped it with relish, and looked at the odd cage Pete was displaying. “All the same, it won’t work!”

Pete laughed. “Reality doesn’t mean a thing to an artist, does it? Be damned to your paradoxes—there’s some answer to them. It did work; the dog appeared exactly four weeks later, just finishing his bark!”

“Then why haven’t time machines come back from the future?” Ned shot at him. He’s been saving that as his final argument, and he sat back to watch the bomb explode.

For a second, Pete blinked. “You never figured that out yourself.”

“Nope. I got it from a science fiction story. But why haven’t they? If yours works, there’ll be more time machines built. With more built, they’ll be improved. They’ll get to be commonplace. People’d use them—and someone would turn up here with one. Or in the past. Why haven’t we met time travelers, Pete?”

“Maybe we have met them, but didn’t know it?”

“Nonsense. You get in that machine and go back to Elizabethan England. Try to pass yourself off as being native to that time even an hour. No, there’d be slip-ups.”

Pete considered it, pouring more wine. “An idea—but you’re right, maybe. I haven’t tried going back—if I’d sent the dog backwards, I couldn’t have checked up on it, while I could be waiting in the future. Okay, you’ve convinced me.”

“Then you’re not going in the contraption.”

Pete’s laughter was spontaneous and loaded with amusement. “I’m going forward and find out why no one has come back! I’ve got a nice collection of rare coins I can trade off up there—should be more valuable—and I’ll bring you back a working invention from the next century. With luck, I’ll bring you the answer. And after that, maybe I can go back and kill an ancestor, just to see what happens.”

“Don’t be a fool!”

But Pete was grinning, and opening the door to the cage that rested in the middle of his laboratory. “Fifty years this trip,” he said, spinning the dials. “And you won’t have long to wait; I’ll come back just about in no time.”

Ned started to yell something, but there was a curious flicker, such as he’d seen when Pete sent the dog forward. The time machine blurred over, its surface seeming to stretch into infinity while contracting to nothing at the same time.

Then it was gone. Ned groped for the wine bottle, cursing, and drained the contents. Then he sat down to wait.

Three days later, the police came looking for Pete, on some mysterious tip, probably from a fellow worker. It was a pretty rough time, for a while, though they finally decided it was just another mystery, and that Ned’s yarn of having been there only to keep an appointment was true. Ned had influential friends, even if he didn’t have money, then.

For three years, he rented Pete’s laboratory, before he made enough to buy it. For a decade, he lived in it; but by then he’d begun to know Pete wasn’t coming back.

* * * *

“The building’s still there,” Old Ned finished.

“The diagrams of his machine are still in the drawers. But Pete never showed up. I tell you, keep your fool grandson out of time machines, Lem. They don’t work. Too many paradoxes—if they’d work, you could steal a future invention, get credit for inventing it, and nobody would ever have to invent it. When things have that many angles that can’t work, the thing itself can’t work.”

Lem shook his head stubbornly. “It worked; the kid got the cat back. Something just happened to your friend—maybe his power failed.”

“Then he wouldn’t have gotten all the way—and he’d have reappeared years ago. Pete measured things—and there was no displacement in space. If something had happened to him, the machine would have been there, anyhow. Besides, I had alarms wired to call the police in—told ’em it was to protect a safe—the minute he showed up. He never showed up; he never came back.”

“So I suppose he just disappeared—time ate him up?” Lem’s stubbornness was cracking a bit, though. His voice was higher than even an old man’s should be.

“I don’t know. But time machines don’t work. Otherwise where are the time travelers from the future?”

They sat quietly for a second. Ned was remembering the years, up to the time he’d given up, disconnected the alarms, and come here to the Arts and Science Club to live. He’d been stubborn, maybe—a little bit—but Pete hadn’t reappeared.

Behind him, the young man cleared his throat, and the robot moved forward. But there was no rule against intrusion when no one was speaking, and the robot came to a stop. Ned looked back, just as the man decided the robot wouldn’t interfere. There was more amusement on the man’s face now, but the bitterness still lay there.

He grinned at Ned, a familiar grin, and his voice was flat and positive. “Time machines work. And there are no paradoxes—absolutely no paradoxes!”

Lem stirred, craning back, and Ned bristled. But something about the younger man caught back the words, as he picked up the thin thread of memory.

The other grinned again, wryly. “It’s simple. Time machines work in one direction—they can’t go back. Your time traveler found that out too late. No trips to the past, no return from the future—and no paradoxes, Ned Brussels.”

He came to his feet, moving over to drop into the chair beside Ned. The older man nodded, stretching out his hand.

“I told you not to try the damned machine, Pete,” Ned told him. Then he chuckled as the oldest cliché among old friends meeting again came to his lips. “Fifty years—and you haven’t changed a bit, Pete LeFranc!”

THE HOHOKAM DIG, by Theodore Pratt

Originally published in Fantastic Universe, Nov. 1956.

At first, the two scientists thought the Indian attack on them was a joke perpetrated by some of their friends. After all, modern Indians did not attack white men any more.

Except that these did.

George Arthbut and Sidney Hunt were both out of New York, on the staff of the Natural History Museum. George was an ethnologist who specialized in what could be reconstructed about the prehistoric Indians of North America, with emphasis on those of the Southwest. He was a tall, lean, gracious bald man in his early sixties.

Sidney was an archeologist who was fascinated by the ruins of the same kind of ancient Indians. Medium-sized, with black hair that belied his sixty-five years, he and George made an excellent team, being the leaders in their field.

They had come west on a particular bit of business this spring, trying to solve the largest question that remained about the old cliff dwellers and the prehistoric desert Indians, both of whom had deserted their villages and gone elsewhere for reasons that remained a mystery.

One theory was that drought had driven them both away. Another theory ran to the effect that enemies wiped them out or made off with them as captives. Still another supposition, at least for the Hohokam desert people, the builders of Casa Grande whose impressive ruins still stood near Coolidge, had to do with their land giving out so they could no longer grow crops, forcing them to go elsewhere to find better soil.

No one really knew. It was all pure guesswork.

* * * *

The two scientists meant to spend the entire summer trying to solve this riddle for all time, concentrating on it to the exclusion of everything else. They drove west in a station wagon stuffed with equipment and tracking a U-Haul-It packed with more.

George drove, on a road that was only two sand tracks across the wild empty desert between Casa Grande Monument and Tonto National Monument where cliff dwellers had lived. It was here, not far ahead, in new ruins that were being excavated, that they hoped to solve the secret of the exodus of the prehistoric Indians. The place was known as the Hohokam Dig.

They topped a rise of ground and came to the site of the dig. Here the sand tracks ended right in the middle of long trenches dug out to reveal thick adobe walls. In the partially bared ruins the outline of a small village could be seen; the detailed excavation would be done this summer by workmen who would arrive from Phoenix and Tucson.

George stopped their caravan and the two men got out, stretching their legs. They looked about, both more interested in the dig, now they were back at it, than setting up camp. They walked around, examining various parts of it, and the excitement of the promise of things to be discovered in the earth came to them. “This summer we’ll learn the answer,” Sidney predicted.

With skeptical hope George replied, “Maybe.”

It was early afternoon when they set up camp, getting out their tent from the U-Haul-It. They took out most of their gear, even setting up a portable TV set run on batteries brought along. They worked efficiently and rapidly, having done this many times before and having their equipment well organized from long experience. By the middle of the afternoon all was ready and they rested, sitting on folding chairs at a small table just outside the opening of their tent.

Looking around at the dig Sidney remarked, “Wouldn’t it be easy if we could talk to some of the people who once lived here?”

“There’s a few questions I’d like to ask them,” said George. “I certainly wish we had some to talk with.”

He had no more than uttered this casual wish than there sounded, from all sides of where they sat, screeching whoops. The naked brown men who suddenly appeared seemed to materialize from right out of the excavations. As they yelled they raised their weapons. The air was filled, for an instant, with what looked like long arrows. Most of them whistled harmlessly past the two scientists, but one hit the side of the station wagon, making a resounding thump and leaving a deep dent, while two buried themselves in the wood of the U-Haul-It and remained there, quivering.

George and Sidney, after the shock of their first surprise at this attack, leaped to their feet.

“The car!” cried Sidney. “Let’s get out of here!”

They both started to move. Then George stopped and grabbed Sidney’s arm. “Wait!”

“Wait?” Sidney demanded. “They’ll kill us!”

“Look,” advised George, indicating the red men who surrounded them; they now made no further move of attack.

George gazed about. “Oh,” he said, “you think somebody’s playing a joke on us?”

“Could be,” said George. He ran one hand over his bald head.

“Some dear friends,” Sidney went on, resenting the scare that had been thrown into them, “hired some Indians to pretend to attack us?”

“Maybe Pimas,” said George. He peered at the Indians, who now were jabbering among themselves and making lamenting sounds as they glanced about at the ruins of the ancient village. There were eighteen of them. They were clad in nothing more than a curious cloth of some kind run between their legs and up and over a cord about their waists, to form a short apron, front and back.

“Or Zunis,” said Sidney.

“Maybe Maricopas,” said George.

“Except,” Sidney observed, “none of them look like those kind of Indians. And those arrows they shot.” He stared at the two sticking in the U-Haul-It. “Those aren’t arrows, George—they’re atlatl lances!”

“Yes,” said George.

Sidney breathed, “They aren’t holding bows—they’ve got atlatls!”

“No modern Indian of any kind,” said George, “uses an atlatl.”

“Most of them wouldn’t even know what it was,” Sidney agreed. “They haven’t been used for hundreds of years; the only place you see them is in museums.”

An atlatl was the weapon which had replaced the stone axe in the stone age. It was a throwing stick consisting of two parts. One was the lance, a feathered shaft up to four feet long, tipped with a stone point. The two-foot flat stick that went with this had a slot in one end and two rawhide finger loops. The lance end was fitted in the slot to be thrown. The stick was an extension of the human arm to give the lance greater force. Some atlatls had small charm stones attached to them to give them extra weight and magic.

Charm stones could be seen fastened to a few of the atlatls being held by the Indians now standing like bronze statues regarding them.

George whispered, “What do you make of it?”

“It isn’t any joke,” replied Sidney. He gazed tensely at the Indians. “That’s all I’m sure of.”

“Have you noticed their breechclouts?”

Sidney stared again. “They aren’t modern clouts. George, they’re right out of Hohokam culture!”

“They aren’t made of cloth, either. That’s plaited yucca fibre.”

“Just like we’ve dug up many times. Only here…” George faltered. “It’s being worn by—by I don’t know what.”

“Look at their ornaments.”

Necklaces, made of pierced colored stones, hung about many of the brown necks. Shell bracelets were to be seen, and here and there a carved piece of turquoise appeared.

“Look at the Indian over there,” George urged.

Sidney looked to the side where George indicated, and croaked, “It’s a girl!”

It was a girl indeed. She stood straight and magnificent in body completely bare except for the brief apron at her loins. Between her beautiful full copper breasts there hung a gleaming piece of turquoise carved in the shape of a coyote.

At her side stood a tall young Indian with a handsome face set with great pride. On her other side was a wizened little old fellow with a wrinkled face and ribs corrugated like a saguaro.

Sidney turned back and demanded, “What do you make of this? Are we seeing things?” Hopefully, he suggested, “A mirage or sort of a mutual hallucination?”

In a considered, gauging tone George replied, “They’re real.”

“Real?” cried Sidney. “What do you mean, real?”

“Real in a way. I mean, Sidney, these—I sound crazy to myself saying it—but I think these are—well, Sid, maybe they’re actual prehistoric Indians.”

“Huh?”

“Well, let’s put it this way: We asked for them and we got them.”

Sidney stared, shocked at George’s statement. “You’re crazy, all right,” he said. “Hohokams in the middle of the Twentieth Century?”

“I didn’t say they’re Hohokams, though they probably are, of the village here.”

“You said they’re prehistoric,” Sidney accused. He quavered, “Just how could they be?”

“Sid, you remember in our Indian studies, again and again, we meet the medicine man who has visions. Even modern ones have done things that are pretty impossible to explain. I believe they have spiritual powers beyond the capability of the white man. The prehistoric medicine men may have developed this power even more. I think the old man there is their medicine man.”

“So?” Sidney invited.

“I’m just supposing now, mind you,” George went on. He rubbed his bald pate again as though afraid of what thoughts were taking place under it. “Maybe way back—a good many hundreds of years ago—this medicine man decided to have a vision of the future. And it worked. And here he is now with some of his people.”

“Wait a minute,” Sidney objected. “So he had this vision and transported these people to this moment in time. But if it was hundreds of years ago they’re already dead, been dead for a long time, so how could they—”

“Don’t you see, Sid? They can be dead, but their appearance in the future—for them—couldn’t occur until now because it’s happened with us and we weren’t living and didn’t come along here at the right time until this minute.”

Sidney swallowed. “Maybe,” he muttered, “maybe.”

“Another thing,” George said. “If we can talk with them we can learn everything we’ve tried to know in all our work and solve in a minute what we’re ready to spend the whole summer, even years, digging for.”

Sidney brightened. “That’s what we wanted to do.”

George studied the Indians again. “I think they’re just as surprised as we are. When they discovered themselves here and saw us—and you must remember we’re the first white men they’ve ever seen—their immediate instinct was to attack. Now that we don’t fight back they’re waiting for us to make a move.”

“What do we do?”

“Take it easy,” advised George. “Don’t look scared and don’t look belligerent. Look friendly and hope some of the modern Indian dialects we know can make connection with them.”

* * * *

The two scientists began, at a gradual pace, to make their way toward the old man, the young man, and the girl. As they approached, the girl drew back slightly. The young man reached over his shoulder and from the furred quiver slung on his back drew an atlatl lance and fitted it to his throwing stick, holding it ready. The other warriors, all about, followed suit.

The medicine man alone stepped forward. He held up a short colored stick to which bright feathers were attached and shook it at the two white men. They stopped.

“That’s his aspergill,” observed Sidney. “I’d like to have that one.”

The medicine man spoke. At first the scientists were puzzled, then George told Sidney, “That’s Pima, or pretty close to it, just pronounced differently. It probably shows we were right in thinking the Pimas descended from these people. He wants to know who we are.”

George gave their names. The medicine man replied, “The man who has white skin instead of red speaks our language in a strange way. I am Huk.” He turned to the young man at his side and said, “This is Good Fox, our young chief.” He indicated the girl. “That is Moon Water, his wife.”

George explained what he and the other white man with him were doing here. Huk, along with all the other Indians, including Good Fox and Moon Water, listened intently; they seemed greatly excited and disturbed.

When George was finished Good Fox turned to Huk and said, “You have succeeded, wise one, in bringing us forward, far in the future to the time of these men with white skins.”

“This is the truth,” said the wrinkled Huk; he did not boast but rather seemed awed.

Moon Water spoke in a frightened tone. She looked about at the partially excavated ruins and asked, “But what has happened to our village?” She faltered, “Is this the way it will look in the future?”

“It is the way,” Good Fox informed her sorrowfully.

“I weep for our people,” she said. “I do not want to see it.” She hung her pretty face over her bare body, then, in a moment, raised it resolutely.

Good Fox shook the long scraggly black hair away from his eyes and told the white men, “We did not mean to harm you. We did not know what else to do upon finding you here and our village buried.”

Ignoring that in his excited interest, Sidney asked, “What year are you?”

“Year?” asked Good Fox. “What is this word?”

Both Sidney and George tried to get over to him what year meant in regard to a date in history, but Good Fox, Huk, and Moon Water, and none of the others could understand.

“We do not know what you mean,” Huk said. “We know only that we live here in this village—not as you see it now—but one well built and alive with our people. As the medicine man I am known to have extra power and magic in visions. Often I have wondered what life would be like in the far future. With this group I conjured up a vision of it, carrying them and myself to what is now here before us.”

George and Sidney glanced at each other. George’s lips twitched and those of Sidney trembled. George said softly to the Indians, “Let us be friends.” He explained to them what they were doing here. “We are trying to find out what you were—are—like. Especially what made you desert people leave your villages.”

They looked blank. Huk said, “But we have not left—except in this vision.”

In an aside to George, Sidney said, “That means we’ve caught them before they went south or wherever they went.” He turned back to Huk. “Have the cliff people yet deserted their dwellings?”

Huk nodded solemnly. “They have gone. Some of them have joined us here, and more have gone to other villages.”

“We have read that into the remains of your people, especially at Casa Grande,” Sidney told him. With rising excitement in his voice he asked, “Can you tell us why they left?”

Huk nodded. “This I can do.”

Now the glance of Sidney and George at each other was quick, their eyes lighting.

“I’ll take it down on the typewriter,” Sidney said. “Think of it! Now we’ll know.”

He led Huk to the table set in front of the tent, where he brought out a portable typewriter and opened and set it up. He sat on one chair, and Huk, gingerly holding his aspergill before him as though to protect himself, sat on the other.

Good Fox, Moon Water and the other Indians crowded about, curious to see the machine that came alive under Sidney’s fingers as Huk began to relate his story. Soon their interest wandered in favor of other things about the two men with white skin. They wanted to know about the machine with four legs.

George opened up the hood of the station wagon and showed them the engine. He sat in the car and started the motor. At the noise the Indians jumped back, alarmed, and reaching for their atlatls. Moon Water approached the rear end of the car. Her pretty nose wrinkled at the fumes coming from it and she choked, drawing back in disgust. “It is trying to kill me,” she said.

Clearly, she did not approve of an automobile.

George cut off its engine.

Over Good Fox’s shoulder hung a small clay water jug hung in a plaited yucca net. George asked for a drink from it and when he tasted it and found it fresh it was wondrous to him that its water was hundreds of years old. He brought out a thermos, showing the Indians the modern version of carrying water. They tasted of its contents and exclaimed at its coolness. Good Fox held the thermos, admiring it.

“Would you like to have it?” asked George.

“You would give it to me?” the handsome young Indian asked.

“It’s yours.”

“Then I give you mine.” He gave George his clay water jug and could not know how much more valuable it was than the thermos.

George then took them to the portable television set and turned it on. When faces, music, and words appeared the Indians jerked back, then jabbered and gathered closer to watch. A girl singer, clad in a gown that came up to her neck, caused Moon Water to inquire, “Why does she hide herself? Is she ashamed?”

The standards of modesty, George reflected as he glanced at the lovely nude form of the prehistoric Indian girl, change with the ages.

Of the people and noises on the TV screen Good Fox wanted to know quite solemnly, “Are these crazy people? Is it the way you treat your people who go crazy?”

George laughed. “You might say it’s something like that.”

A shout came from Sidney at the card table near the tent where he was taking down Huk’s story. “George! He’s just told me why the cliff people left! And why the desert people will have to leave in time. It’s a reason we never thought of! It’s because—”

Just then a big multi-engined plane came over, drowning out his words. The Indians stared skyward, now in great alarm. They looked about for a place to run and hide, but there was none. They held their hands over their ears and glanced fearfully at the TV which now spluttered, its picture and sound thrown off by the plane. Awesomely, they waited until the plane went over.

“We fly now in machines with wings,” George explained.

“To make such a noise in the air,” Moon Water said, “is wicked, destroying all peace.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” said George.

“You have this,” Good Fox observed, indicating the TV, which was now back to normal, “and you send the other through the sky to make it crazier than before.” He shook his head, not comprehending.

George shut off the TV. He took up a camera of the kind that automatically finishes a picture in a minute’s time. Grouping Good Fox, Moon Water and the other warriors, he took their picture, waited, then pulled it out and showed it to them.

They cried out, one man shouting in fear, “It is great magic!”

George took a number of photographs, including several of Huk as he sat talking with Sidney. No matter what happened he would have this record as Sidney would have that he was taking down on the typewriter.

Next he showed them a pair of binoculars, teaching them how to look through them. They exclaimed and Good Fox said, “With this we could see our enemies before they see us.”

“You have enemies?” George asked.

“The Apache,” Good Fox said fiercely.

George handed him the binoculars. “It is yours to use against the Apache.”

Solemnly the young chief answered, “The man with white skin is thanked. The red man gives in return his atlatl and lances.” He held out his throwing stick and unslung his quiver of lances. George accepted them with thanks; they would be museum pieces.

Finally George showed them a rifle. He looked about for game and after some searching saw a rabbit sitting on a mound in the excavations. As he took aim Good Fox asked, “You would hunt it with your stick?”

George nodded.

“This cannot be done from here,” stated one warrior.

George squeezed the trigger. Instantaneously with the explosion of the shell the rabbit jumped high and then came down, limp and dead. The Indians yelled with fright and ran off in all directions. Huk jumped up from the table. Then all stopped and cautiously returned. One went to the rabbit and picked it up, bringing it back. All, including Huk who left the table, stared with fright at it and at the rifle.

Moon Water expressed their opinion of it. “The thunder of the killing stick is evil.”

“Moon Water speaks the truth,” said Huk.

“It would make hunting easy,” said Good Fox, “but we do not want it even if given to us.”

He drew back from the rifle, and the others edged away from it.

George put it down.

Sidney held up a sheaf of papers. “I’ve got it all, George,” he said exultantly in English, “right here! I asked Huk if they can stay with us in our time, at least for a while. We can study them more, maybe even take them back to show the world.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t have a chance to reply when you shot the rifle.”

George put it formally to the Indians, addressing Huk, Good Fox, Moon Water and the rest. “You have seen something of the modern world. We would like you to stay in it if it is your wish. I don’t know how long you could stay in Huk’s vision, but if you can remain here permanently and not go back to your time and—well, not being alive there any more—we hope you will consider this.”

Huk replied, “It is possible that we could stay in your time, at least as long as my vision lasts, which might be for as long as I lived.” He glanced at Good Fox.

The young chief in turn looked at Moon Water. Her gaze went to the station wagon, to the TV, then up at the sky where the plane had appeared, at the rifle, the camera, the thermos, and all else of the white man. She seemed to weigh their values and disadvantages, looking dubious and doubtful.

Good Fox announced, “We will hold a council about it. As is our custom, all have words to say about such a thing.”

Abruptly he led his people away, into the excavations and over a slight rise of ground, behind which they disappeared.

Sidney murmured, “I don’t like that so much.”

“They must do as they want.” George led the way to the card table and they sat there. On it rested Huk’s aspergill.

“He gave it to me,” Sidney explained.

George placed Good Fox’s netted clay water jug and his atlatl and furred quiver of lances on the table, together with the pictures he had taken of the ancient Indians. They waited.

Sidney, glancing at the low hill behind which the Indians had gone, said, “What they’re doing is choosing between living in modern civilization and remaining dead. What do you think they’ll do?”

“I don’t know,” said George. “They didn’t think so much of us.”

“But they couldn’t choose death and complete oblivion!”

“We’ll see.”

They waited some more.

“At least,” said Sidney, indicating the articles on the table, “we’ll have these for evidence.” He held up the sheaf of papers containing Huk’s story. “And this, giving the real reason the cliff dwellers left. I haven’t told you what it was, George. It’s so simple that—”

He didn’t complete his sentence, for just then Huk, Good Fox, Moon Water, and the other warriors made their choice. It was announced dramatically.

The water jug, the aspergill, and the atlatl and quiver of lances disappeared from the table. In their places, suddenly, there were the thermos and the binoculars.

Sidney stared stupidly at them.

George said quietly, “They’ve gone back.”

“But they can’t do this!” George protested.

“They have.”

Sidney’s hand shook as he picked up the sheaf of papers holding Huk’s story. Indicating it and the photographs, he said, “Well, they haven’t taken these away.”

“Haven’t they?” asked George. He picked up some of the pictures. “Look.”

Sidney looked and saw that the pictures were now blank. His glance went quickly to the typewritten sheets of paper in his hands. He cried out and then shuffled them frantically.

They, too, were blank.

Sidney jumped up. “I don’t care!” he exclaimed. “He told me and I’ve got it here!” He pointed to his head. “I can remember it, anyway.”

“Can you?” asked George.

“Why, certainly I can,” Sidney asserted confidently. “The reason the cliff dwellers left, George, was that they…” Sidney stopped.

“What’s the matter, Sid?”

“Well, I—it—I guess it just slipped my mind for a second.” His brow puckered. He looked acutely upset and mystified. “Huk told me,” he faltered. “Just a minute ago I was thinking of it when I started to tell you. Now…I can’t remember.”

“That’s gone, too.”

“I’ll get it!” Sidney declared. “I’ve just forgotten it for a minute. I’ll remember!”

“No,” said George, “you won’t.”

Sidney looked around. “There must be something left.” He thought. “The atlatl lances they shot at us!” He looked at the U-Haul-It. The lances no longer stuck in its side. Nor were those that had fallen to the ground to be seen.

Sidney sat down again, heavily. “We had it all,” he moaned. “Everything we’d been working for. And now…”

“Now we’ll have to dig for it again,” said George. “Do it the hard way. We’ll start tomorrow when the workmen come.”

Sidney looked up. “There’s one thing!” he cried. “The dent in the car made by the lance! It’s still there, George! However everything else worked, that was forgotten. It’s still there!”

George glanced at the dent in the side panel of the station wagon. “It’s still there,” he agreed. “But only to tell us this wasn’t a dream. No one else would believe it wasn’t caused by a rock.”

George groaned. He stared at the rise of ground behind which the Indians had disappeared. “Huk,” he pleaded. “Good Fox. Moon Water. The others. Come back, come back…”

No one appeared over the rise of ground as the cool desert night began to close in.

GUARANTEED TENURE, by H.B. Fyfe

Previously unpublished.

Yeah, Jimmy, pie and coffee to finish with. “Finish” is right, I guess. Probably the last time I eat in this diner.

No, no, the food’s swell—that’s why I always kept coming here and putting on a little extra weight, even since they made me head of the detective bureau. That’s where the trouble is—I’m out!

Never mind the “Inspector” Keeler; from now on you can call me Johnny. Say, if you have a spare job behind that counter…

You ain’t heard? Well…I see why there won’t be much said. Probably nobody will ever notice, what with all the talk about the new colony on Mars and our second anniversary of passing 2050, the time travel limit year.

Yeah, two lumps, thanks.

That time limit! Why did those boobs from the future have to set it at 2050? Only for that, Joe Balton never could’ve pulled such a raw deal on me.

That’s right. Joe Balton, the biggest crook in the city, if we could’ve proved it. Nobody’s ever going to prove it now—he took care of that. I nearly had him, but— What?

Naw, that wasn’t really Joe we sent up. I know what they said in the papers and on video, but Joe’s still running his rackets. In fact, he’s got himself a new “in” you wouldn’t hardly believe. All on account of me getting on his list. I guess he was real annoyed at me about the trial.

I s’pose you heard all about the raid we pulled on that warehouse that wasn’t no warehouse, and caught Slippery Tyner selling that new dope from Mars. Well, I thought we were pretty smart tying in Balton as the brains behind it. Of course, everybody knows he owns every racket in the city, but tying him in was something else again. The D.A. looked like he found the end of the rainbow when I showed him the evidence.

Sure, sure, the trial. I didn’t get to see all of it, except when they had me on the stand, but I thought Joe looked a little strange. Then the judge gives him ten to twenty, and I put my mind on my live file.

That’s why I nearly drop through the floor a couple of weeks later, when Reilly comes in and says there’s somebody to see me. Over his shoulder, I see Balton.

Yeah, I’ll have another cup. Two lumps.

Well, I think I’m seeing things, but no such luck. It’s Joe, all right. He walks in and sits down, cool as you please.

“How did you get out?” I ask him.

He looks around the office like he’s measuring it for new furniture. Finally he gets to me, and puts on that oily grin.

“Out of what, Keeler? Was I in something?”

I can’t help biting.

“But I saw the judge sentence you!” says I, wondering already who he had that could promote a pardon so fast.

“Oh, not me, Keeler,” says he. “You saw a…friend…who’s doing me a little favor. I’m too busy to go myself.”

Then I get it. I remember all the stories I heard about him having three or four doubles on his payroll, just like those old dictators. The gall of him! Just sits back and sends one of his stooges to take the rap. When I come out with it, he just grins and tells me I’m right.

“However, Keeler,” he says, “arranging that cost me a big cut of the take. If you’d like to think I hold it against you, go right ahead—because I do! In fact, I think I’ll have to make some changes around here.”

That’s where I blew up, I guess. He gets out, but not as fast as I tell him to, and there’s something about the way he goes that leaves me a little worried. I call Reilly.

“Was it really Joe Balton?” he asks as soon as he’s inside.

“He said he was,” I tell him, “and I believe it. Put some good men to tailing him! Every time he sneezes, let me know!”

There’s lots of work, but I put it off till they report.

* * * *

The boys do pretty good. They cover Balton like a fog.

They watch him meeting with two new operators he imported, to take Slippery Tyner’s place I guess. They follow him to that penthouse he pays for on King Avenue. They tell me how long he stays and even get the girl’s telephone number. I got to admit Joe picks them nice. I wonder if the boys watch what goes on inside, too.

Then the story comes in that Joe’s been nosing around the time station, talking to that tall, skinny, wise-guy supervisor, Qualu, that says he’s from 2280. Ever see his pix on video?

Yeah, always looks like he thinks we’re all too damn funny for words but he’s too refined to come right out and say so.

Well, I go to see him after Balton leaves.

Qualu won’t open up a bit.

“You see, Inspector,” he says, looking me up and down like I was dressed up for Halloween, “we are not permitted to adjust local-time affairs, for the simple reason that laws vary with time. The legal or moral, I am sure you understand, is a matter not only of place but also of time.”

“Sure, sure,” I mumble, “but this Balton is a crook any time you look at him. Laws don’t change that much.”

“It is not my prerogative to decide that, Inspector,” he smirks. I could see him trying to count the pockets in my jacket. “The laws permit us to transmit only a certain number of selected persons backward and forward through time—and within stated limits. There are strict rules as to how far anyone may travel and what objects may be taken along.”

“Joe Balton wouldn’t be promoting a deal to get himself out of the present, would he?” I ask him.

“I am supposed to keep such requests confidential.”

“I don’t like the look in his eye. He knows more than I do, and he’s getting a laugh out of knowing that I know he does.”

“However,” he says, grinning a little, “I will say this much. If Mr. Balton, or any similar person, requests transmission, I must refuse. There are stringent rules against challenging any period’s judgment of what constitutes an undesirable character.”

“You mean you can’t take a crook like Balton?”

“Not from or to this particular period. In other times, such a man might be quite respected and you, Inspector, might be persona non grata.”

“What d’you mean? What’s the matter with me?”

“Oh, nothing at all…in this time. In contrast to Mr. Balton, you could time travel legally. Let me assure you of that!

I think it over a minute. I never had time to read up on the Interperiod Time Travel Bureau. They’ve only been with us a couple of years, you know.

“How about information?” I ask.

He leans back in that funny chair he has that seems to bend right with him all the while and looks at the ceiling like he had a book of regulations up there to read from.

“Research is out of the question, Inspector. I cannot find out for you when you will die, for instance, or tomorrow’s stock prices, or even whether your guess of what someone will do is correct. Nor—if you have been worrying about it—may I do any such thing as obtaining some powerful weapon from the future at the request of…well, Mr. Balton, for example.”

I was thinking along that line about then. I guess my face looks kind of funny when he comes out with that crack.

He turns his head away, but I see the corner of his mouth twitch. I change my mind about clouting him one.

“You say you’d let me travel in time. What’s to keep somebody else from going for Balton?”

“We have become extremely accomplished at preventing that sort of thing, Inspector. Extremely! In fact, you would be deeply hurt if I described how much better than your department we are at keeping control of the movements of persons we are watching.”

* * * *

Reilly didn’t have any big news about Balton when I got back to the office, so I went home and tried to get some sleep. It wasn’t easy; something about that Qualu and his knowing squint kept me awake most of the night.

But the real pay-off comes the next morning.

Being a bachelor, I’m waiting for Tastimeal Service to deliver breakfast and watching the video news, when—bang!

The big story is how the commissioner is pulling a shake-up in the department. Just like that, overnight! Naturally, I listen for my own name; you never can tell! But they say Inspector Keeler is keeping his post.

Yeah, I’m okay, it seems; but there’s one very queer angle. I hear a lot of names I know, poker friends and guys I’ve worked with for years. Like Reilly, for instance. This one’s retired, that one’s transferred, another one is back on a beat in the jungle. I think it smells funny that it should be only guys I know so well. And most of them are honest cops, as far as I know.

I don’t think it’s so funny by the time I get down to the office. There’s a new fellow in the outer office. He’s got one of those stone faces, and I don’t like the set of his eyes. Personally, I wouldn’t even put him on traffic at a school crossing. He asks me what I want.

“Who are you?” I ask him.

“I’m Detective Yager,” he says. “One of Inspector Keeler’s assistants. Who are you?”

“I’m Inspector Keeler,” I tell him, “and I don’t need your assistance!”

He stares at me deadpan for about two minutes, then gets on the desk video.

“Harrigan!” he snaps. “There’s an old crank in here claims he’s Inspector Keeler. Come over and throw him out for me, will you?”

For a few seconds, I can’t even talk. Then I realize my jaw is hanging. I pick it up and head for my own door, figuring to get on my own video and get to the bottom of this. Yager jumps and manages to get himself between me and the doorknob. I shove him while he’s off balance, and he takes a dive into the files. As he’s growling and floundering around, I get the door open. I wish now I never did.

There’s this guy behind the desk, see?

I recognize the face right away, but it takes a little while to place it. I’m running my mind through the rogues’ gallery—that’s natural, ain’t it? He just sits there, staring at me…I don’t know…half-ashamed, and yet like he’s sorry for me. Then, all of a sudden, I know!

He’s wearing the face I see every day in the mirror, except a little older and thinner. He’s me!

“Catch him, Yager!” I hear him saying, like a playback of my own voice.

I realize stoneface is holding me up from behind with his big paws under my armpits, so I get my feet under me.

“All right,” says the fellow behind the desk. “Feeling steadier now, Jack?”

That’s the last straw, and now I know for sure he’s really me and not just a well-coached look-alike. Everybody nowadays calls me Johnny but when I was a kid it used to be “Jack,” and most of the time I think of myself or talk to myself as Jack. I take a good look.

He isn’t exactly me, of course. He looks kind of seedy and run down, even in his new suit. I tell you, he had that hungry, beat-down air of a guy that’s been on the skids…oh, maybe ten years or so. He’s me-plus-ten-years, which makes him a little different, just like a kitten and the old, ear-chewed tom he gets to be in ten years are the same animal but not…not equal.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” he says. “This is just the way it’s going to be. You’ll get over it. I can promise you for sure that you get over it.”

I look at him, and I don’t like what I see. Either he reads my face or he…remembers how it is, because he stares down at his desk…my desk.

“I’ll have to ask you to leave town by midnight,” he says.

I can’t think of a single thing to say. Yager, I guess, must have grabbed my badge and shoved me out of the office, because pretty soon I find myself creeping down the front steps.

Out there in the sunlight, I begin to think I dreamed it. I turn around to stomp right into the commissioner’s office if I have to and yowl out loud.

Well, I ask you! Do you think I could get in to see anybody? Not a one!

All the guys I knew seem to be someplace else. I try video calling from the lobby, but I kept getting those simple-minded police answerbots they use to deal with cranks. I tried calling Pat Driscoll and Tony Martini and asked for Reilly. The old runaround every time! They didn’t know who I was talking about!

Finally, I go down to the corner videonews booth, shove a buck in the slot, and check the latest. It’s the same as at breakfast time. Big shake-up, but Inspector Keeler is still in his job.

First, I think I’ll at least go look around some of the beats the guys I know are supposed to be pounding again. The next thing, I find out they run the taxi that drifts up so handy. I wind up at my own apartment. The driver hands me a note.

It’s from Qualu. I have it right here…look!

“Dear Inspector,” he says. “As you probably know by now, I spoke accurately in saying there was no objection to your being transmitted through time. I feel I owe you the explanation, in fact, that Mr. Balton arranged at considerable expense to bring you back from 2012, since I was forced to deny his request to send you forward to that year.

“Such an action, I pointed out, would scramble things horribly, since records show an Inspector Keeler present at your detective bureau throughout those years. There is no contemporary method of substitution that would account for fingerprints and other details. Mr. Balton therefore agreed to my alternative suggestion.

“I imagine I need not remind you of our skill at controlling the movements of those under our observation. Since we will be with you—or right behind you—for some years, I advise you to accustom yourself to us. Anytime you care to match Mr. Balton’s fee, our services will, of course, be at your disposal.”

What a laugh! He knows I won’t ever be able to match Balton. I don’t even know how I’m going to eat for the next ten years. Money in the bank? Me-plus-ten has that. They’d put me in for forgery if I tried to write a check. Unemployment insurance? Inspector John Keeler is employed! References? You tell me!

I’m lucky to have money in my pocket to pay for that last piece of pie, now that I finally convinced those guys I got a right to eat before taking the train.

Yeah, I said “guys.” Every time today I think I’m slipping out a back way, they wind up herding me home. Very smooth—just a bunch of friends seeing a pal back from the tavern.

Worst of it all is that it’ll work for them.

Yeah, they’ve even got me believing it now. It’s going to work, all right. That’s what me-plus-ten meant in the office this morning when he said he was sure how it’d be. I can see how it is with him, poor guy. Ten years on the skids, and I’ll be ready to fill any job they like and do whatever they want. What a racket for Balton then!

And I can’t really kick!

They’re not taking my job away; they’re making sure I stay in it.

And how many fellows my age can bet—as an absolutely sure thing, mind you!—that they’ll be alive and…well, alive ten years from now? I got a guarantee!

I don’t know why they take a chance on letting me tell even you about it. Maybe they think I don’t know enough to make anybody believe me. I guess I don’t. All I know is I’ll be back this morning ten years older. Maybe then I can tell you the rest of it.

I’ll try, anyhow, if they let me keep coming to your place to eat.

What’s that? Jimmy, how the hell do you know if it might be arranged?

Jimmy…? Not you, too!

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 42, by Grendel Briarton

Taken from The Collected Feghoot (1992)

It was Ferdinand Feghoot who, in 3234-zz-1877, saved the Native American from cultural extinction. The learned Texarkana Uetbacq, Doctorette of Trans-temporal Sociology and Chairman of the Society for the Aesthetic Rearrangement of History, had decided that they must be totally integrated with the 19th Century post-Potato-Famine immigrant Irish. “They are culturally sterile,” she flatly declared. “No Native American ever invented anything.”

At once, Feghoot challenged her to go back to 1877, and at once she accepted. On the Sioux Reservation, he escorted her to the teepee of the great Sitting Bull, who sat with vast dignity behind a fire of buffalo chips. His coup-sticks—bearing his scalps and other trophies of war—were fastened to a skin stretched overhead, something never previously seen.

“Ugh!” he announced. “Squaw look. Me great strategist. Me fix damfool Custer heap good. Huh—also fix Seventh Cavalry.”

His visitor merely bristled.

“Ugh!” the old warrior went on, winking at Feghoot. “Also me great inventor. Me make heap good gadget first time.”

“Rubbish!” sneered Miss Uetbacq. “You’ll have to show me!”

“Ugh!” said Ferdinand Feghoot, pointing up at the trophies. “A coup-stickal ceiling.”

With thanks to Joe Olson

NEVER GO BACK, by Charles V. de Vet

Originally appeared in Amazing Stories, August 1953.

Success! He had returned! But as he stood with the warm rain splashing against his shoulders and running sluggishly down his naked body, the feeling of triumph he should have felt was dulled and numbed by a presentiment of disaster. Unease, tinged with a sense of horror, centered at the pit of his stomach like a lead weight. An aura of sourceless despair seemed to surround him. He felt it reach for him.

There was just enough light to make out, vaguely, the features of the old deserted house in front of him.

He must not be found here without clothes, he thought, as he walked around the wing of the house. His legs felt heavy and he had to lift them with an obvious effort. It was as though the night air had become viscous and clung to his legs.

The second window was unlatched, as he had expected. He raised it and crawled through.

Groping carefully in the dark, dim mists of memory returned as he felt remembered pieces of furniture scattered about the room. In the downstairs bedroom he found the old iron bed still standing in its corner. Ripping a tattered curtain from one of the windows, he wiped himself dry.

He lay on the bed and curled up to sleep. The summer night was warm and the old house still held its trapped heat. He’d need no blankets.

This was the same bed his grandfather had died in months before, but it gave him no feeling of unrest to sleep here. He had always liked his grandfather, and the liking had been returned.

The bed had a faint odor of mold and mustiness.

* * * *

Sometime toward morning Meissner awoke. Coolness had crept into the house and he was too uncomfortable to go back to sleep. Through the window at his head he saw the first light of breaking dawn.

He rose and rubbed his body vigorously to bring warmth back into the flesh. Then he left the bedroom, went through the dining room, and up the stairway to the second floor.

In one of the clothes-closets off the hall he found a shirt, a pair of trousers—slightly too large for him—and shoes. There were no stockings but the pants came down low on his legs and probably no one would notice. In one of the trouser pockets he found a half-dollar. This was an unexpected bit of luck and, for a moment, it lifted the black depression that still rode his spirits like a cloak.

When his grandfather had died, Meissner remembered, the house had been left pretty much as it was for almost a year. Now and then some one of his children—all of them married—would drop in and pick up something he wanted. But it was a year before the house was completely cleaned out and sold.

Meissner waited until broad daylight before venturing outside. He had not walked far before he recognized two men coming toward him.

“Good morning, Mr. van Nemortal. And Mr. Plucker,” Meissner said, as they met.

The men looked at him in surprise and grunted noncommittal replies. This would never do, Meissner reflected. Too much familiarity with his surroundings could easily lead to trouble. He must keep his identity secret at all costs.

At the Busy Bee Meissner had wheat cakes and coffee. He took his time eating them, waiting for the business district of the small town to come to life. In the meantime he glanced at the calendar and verified the date. July 8, 1933. Becker had done a good job in figuring when he would appear again in his trip into the past. He should be in time to save Norbert Kerl’s life.

At a quarter to nine he left the Busy Bee and walked over to the school grounds. And now the first excitement of expectation ran through him like a live current—but mingled with it was the ever present dread. He wished he could put his finger on the reason for that dread.

In a few minutes he should be able to see himself as he had been twenty years earlier. What would his sensations be as he watched himself playing in the school yard?

Most of the children were already out on the grounds, playing a game called pump-pump-pull-away. He had almost forgotten that game, but it had been very popular in his youth.

For five minutes Meissner watched, but saw no signs of his former self. However, he recognized one of the smaller boys as Norbert Kerl.

Primarily, he had come back out of scientific curiosity, to see if the medium he and Becker had devised would work. However, in picking a date he had decided on July 8, 1933. That was the date young Kerl had drowned in the old stone pit. And, incidental as it was to the main purpose of his journey, Meissner wanted to prevent that tragedy, if at all possible.

He did not know how long it would be before he snapped back into the future. Perhaps he would not have time to prevent Kerl from going to the swimming hole, so he decided to scare him away somehow. He walked nearer to where the boys were playing. “Norbert,” he called, “will you come here a minute?”

“Yeah?” Kerl asked as he ran over.

“How’s the water in the old swimming hole?” Meissner asked.

“Pretty good,” Kerl answered, looking at him questioningly.

“I was over there the other day,” Meissner said. “And I saw a mother copperhead with fourteen young ones swimming around. That’s going to be a dangerous place to swim for awhile.”

“Copperheads?” Kerl asked. “They’re poison, ain’t they?”

“A bite from one of them will kill you in ten minutes,” Meissner told him. “I wouldn’t go near there for a long time if I were you.”

“I won’t,” Kerl said. “Thanks.” He shifted his feet uncomfortably. “I got to go back and play now.”

“Just a minute,” Meissner said, before Kerl could leave. “Where is little Art Meissner now? I don’t see him playing.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Oh, sure you do,” Meissner said. “He’s about your size. Dark hair. You play with him a lot.”

“There ain’t no kid here by that name,” Kerl answered. He ran back to the other children.

No kid here by that name! The dreariness that had been gnawing at Meissner’s vitals became a cry of agony. He remembered the school, and the children—though he had forgotten most of their names—and everything he saw around him. He, in his youth, had to be there somewhere. He decided to take the risk of talking to his old teacher.

“Miss Gallagher,” Meissner said, “I’m looking for a boy by the name of Arthur Meissner. I understand he’s in your class.”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Miss Gallagher replied. “There’s no boy by that name in school. There is a George Meissner in the eighth grade; but he has no brothers.”

George Meissner was his older brother. The feeling was worse now. She had said that George had no brothers. That wasn’t possible.

“Well, thank—” the words caught in Meissner’s throat and he turned and stumbled blindly out of the room.

Something was wrong here—terribly wrong. But he had to be absolutely certain that he was making no mistake. He started determinedly down the street.

At the end of three blocks Meissner came to the large, square house where he had lived as a boy. His mother should be home now.

It wouldn’t do to blurt out that he had come from the future and that he was her son, he decided. Especially now that there was a mystery here that he must clear up. He’d have to think up some plausible story to use while he talked to her. He rang the bell.

“Yes?” The woman who answered was younger than Meissner had remembered. She was younger than he. Yet, she was unmistakably his mother. Her face and figure already bore the signs of hard work’s molding. She had always worked hard, he remembered.

“I’m Mr. Anderson,” Meissner said. “I’ve been hired by the board of education to conduct a survey of parents with children in school. You have two, have you not, Mrs. Meissner?”

“I have only one child,” the woman said, drying her hands on the dish towel she carried. “His name is George, and he’s in the eighth grade.”

The crying inside became worse and Meissner could no longer hold it inside. “Mother,” he cried, “don’t you recognize me? I’m your son!”

The woman looked alarmed, and instantly Meissner realized how grave a misstep he had made. Here he was, a man older than she, claiming to be her son. “I’m afraid I can’t talk any longer,” the woman said. She was clearly frightened now.

“Please, just one more question,” Meissner begged. “You’re positive that you do not have a son by the name of Arthur?”

“Yes,” she said and closed the door quickly.

* * * *

Meissner spent the afternoon at the old swimming hole. He did not think it wise to remain around town. Probably by now his mother had spread an alarm about a strange-acting man. The townspeople would undoubtedly think him insane. Perhaps they would even arrest him. Further, he wanted to be certain that young Kerl did not visit the swimming hole that day. As he remembered, Kerl had drowned at about four-thirty in the afternoon.

The day was warm and Meissner lay in the cool shade of a willow tree. Overhead a bird chirped cheerfully, and Meissner knew that ordinarily he should have felt peaceful and relaxed on a day like this. But his nerves were taut as stretched wires, and his emotions were those of a man sentenced to die. All day long a dog howled dismally off in the distance.

When dusk came Meissner knew that at least he had managed to prevent Kerl’s drowning—on that day anyway. He started back for his grandfather’s house.

Becker had estimated that Meissner would spend about twenty-four hours in past time before he snapped back into the future. His analogy had been that it would be like a rubber band, snapping twenty years into the past, where it would pause—for the time he would be able to spend there—before it began its return journey. Becker had not been able to estimate it exactly.

Meissner opened the door of his grandfather’s house and felt himself snatched as in a giant hand and whisked out of time and space.

* * * *

When Meissner returned he found himself standing in the dim light of nearly dawn. But where was Becker, he wondered. Becker was supposed to be waiting for him. And when he was not able to be here, he was to have left a change of clothing for Meissner. There was none to be seen.

Becker had not been able to estimate the exact time he would return. He had only been able to conclude that it would be a bit beyond the time Meissner had started. His rubber band would snap him back and its momentum would carry him a bit beyond his original starting point. Probably about a week into the future. That would give Becker plenty of time to make arrangements for his return. But there was no one here.

Perhaps Becker had underestimated the time, Meissner thought. Or perhaps he had returned to a time before he started. But then he would have met himself again before he left. More likely Becker had miscalculated and he had gone farther into the future than Becker had judged. But even so Becker should be waiting, or he should have left some sign that Meissner would recognize.

Meissner shrugged. Whatever the explanation, he couldn’t afford to be caught here without clothes. He turned down an alley that ran to his left. A third of the way down the alley he saw a shirt and a pair of overalls hanging on a line. Slipping into the back yard, Meissner pulled the clothes off the line and put them on.

He was just fastening the last button on the shirt when he heard the clink of milk bottles. Then a shout. “What are you doing there?” a man’s sleepy voice called. Meissner ran, but the man followed, shouting, “Stop! Come back with those clothes!”

Meissner increased his pace. He’d begun to outdistance the man when he stubbed his bare toe on a rock and fell.

His hands scraped along the cinders, and one knee tore through the leg of the overalls. He almost lost out then, but he climbed quickly to his feet and sprinted around the corner.

Meissner knew now where he’d go to hide. The Chicago and Minneapolis railroad tracks ran through a gully about six blocks away. The sides of the gully were overgrown with Indian coffee bushes and weeds. Meissner had lost his pursuer now. At least he heard no sounds of him.

Once down in the gully, he crawled into the thickest bushes and lay down.

He was more tired than he had suspected; and he was thirsty, but he dared not leave. The man from whom he had stolen the clothing might still be looking for him. Soon sleep swept away his troubles and he dozed for the remainder of the forenoon.

Sometime during the afternoon Meissner awoke and his mouth was pinched with a tight and dry sourness. His whole body ached and protested against his every move. He placed the back of his hand against his forehead and it was hot and feverish. He knew he had to have food and water soon.

It should be safe to venture out now, he decided. If the man—or the police—were looking for him, and caught him, he could call Becker. There would be some explanations necessary, but probably no great danger of detention.

* * * *

“Good God, don’t tell me you don’t know me either?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Doctor Becker said, “but to the best of my knowledge I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

“But you must have!” Meissner’s voice was high and unsteady. “I’m Arthur Meissner. You and I discovered the secret of travelling in time! I went back to my childhood, and now I’ve returned. You must remember me!”

“Are you sure that you feel well?”

“Of course I do,” Meissner exclaimed. “Why won’t you admit that you know me? You’re like the others in the past. They insisted that nobody like me had ever lived there. Even my mother denied me.” His voice lost its tenseness and sank to a gray hopelessness. “Now, if you don’t know me, I don’t know what I’ll do.” His knees trembled, and he leaned his hand against the door for support. A flash of fever coursed through his body and burned into his eyes.

“If there’s something I can do…”

“No, it seems not,” Meissner said tonelessly. He turned to go, but his knees sagged slowly beneath him and he slumped to the doorstep.

* * * *

“At last you’ve come around,” Becker said. “I was a bit worried about you.” He felt Meissner’s wrist. “Your pulse has slowed down some, but your fever is as high as ever. I fail to find evidence of anything wrong with you, though, except for the scratches on your knees and hands.”

Meissner spoke eagerly. “Tell me, Doctor,” he said, “and please please don’t joke. You do remember me, don’t you?”

Becker shook his head.

“But then, what’s happened to me? Why doesn’t anybody know me?”

“Take this sedative, please,” Becker said. “You need more rest. After you sleep we’ll talk again.”

* * * *

This time when Meissner awoke he felt better, and his head was clear. His fever still burned, but it did not affect his thinking.

Becker must have heard him moving, for he entered the bedroom almost immediately. “How are you feeling now?” he asked.

“Some better, I guess,” Meissner replied. “I suppose you think I’m crazy?”

“No. But your high fever has induced some strange hallucinations. I hope you’ve managed to rid yourself of them.”

“Doctor,” Meissner said earnestly, “I want you to do me a favor. Just pretend—at least until I’ve told you my story—that you don’t think I’m crazy or have hallucinations. Think and act as if what I’m going to tell you could have happened. Will you do that?”

“Of course,” Becker answered. “Go right ahead.”

“All right. To start with, my name is Arthur Meissner. Six years ago I met a man by the name of Walter Becker. This was not a coincidence. Becker was a physicist; one of the best in the country. I, on the other hand, was an amateur, working along unusual lines of somatology. The story is long, but its essential feature is that I had an idea for building a time machine and, with Becker’s help and scientific knowledge, succeeded.

“I went back twenty years into time, to my youth. And when I arrived I found that I had never existed there—even though I remembered everything I saw. Now, when I return here, I find that you know nothing about me, or our experiments. Can you possibly give me any explanation?”

Becker was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “The Becker you refer to, I presume, is supposed to be me. You say that he was a famous physicist. I am a medical doctor! So, if I were to grant that your story is true, are you certain that I’m the man you’re looking for?”

“Positive. You’re not only identical, but you live in this same house. I’ve spent many hours with you, working in your laboratory in the basement.”

“I have a woodshop in the basement,” Becker said, “but no laboratory.” He cleared his throat. “I have thought over everything you told me,” Becker said. “I’ve considered it objectively, as you asked. Strangely enough, I believe you. Or at least I’m convinced that you’re sincere. Why don’t you bathe and shave, if you feel well enough, and after you’re through we can talk again.”

“A good idea.” Meissner rose and walked into the bathroom. He looked into the looking glass and was startled at his reflection. His bitter experience had done ghastly things to him. He would hardly have recognized himself. His face seemed bloated and puffed, his brows were heavier, and his whiskers were black and tough as steel barbs. He shaved with difficulty. But after it was over he did feel better.

“Now,” Becker said, after they’d seated themselves, “acting on the assumption that your story is true, I’ve arrived at an answer to the mystery of what happened to you. Naturally, I can give you no assurance that it is the correct one, but it is an explanation, and may help you get peace of mind, if nothing else.”

Meissner sat up straighter. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Nature,” Becker continued, “has certain immutable laws which cannot be defied with impunity. True, science is finding new truths every day, and finding that the old accepted beliefs are wrong. However,” Becker paused while he searched for the exact words he wanted, “certain truths and laws are inviolable by their own intrinsic necessity. To use an example, you’ve probably heard the old saw about what happens when an irresistible force strikes an immovable object. Theoretically at least, it is possible to have an irresistible force. And it is just as possible to have an immovable object. But it is not possible to have both. If the force is irresistible, it will move any object. If, on the other hand, the object is immovable, no force will be able to move it.

“Another immutable law of nature is this: No two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. You may have heard that stated before?”

“I believe I have,” Meissner answered. “But what does that have to do with what’s happened to me?”

“I’m coming to that,” Becker said. “If you travelled backward in time as you claim, you attempted to violate a law of nature which may be regarded as a corollary of the axiom that no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. The one you violated is one so self-evident that it’s probably never been defined by an axiom. It may be stated as: no object, undivided, can occupy more than one unit of space at one time.”

“Are you trying to tell me that I could not exist—at the same time—both as a youth and as an adult?”

“Yes,” Becker answered. “You see, you yourself are the object in this particular instance, and by going back into time you—the same object—would be occupying two separate units of space at the same time. Which is axiomatically impossible. Therefore, nature made its adjustment; the same as it would if an irresistible force hit a so-called immovable object. It eliminates one of them. It did the same when it eliminated your past.”

“I see, rather vaguely, what you mean,” Meissner said. “But why, then, don’t you remember me, now that I’m back?”

“But don’t you see, the things you expect me to remember about you also happened in your past, and you wiped out all that by your violation of one of nature’s precepts. Therefore, the things you remember about your contacts with me never happened either.”

“But then how can I be here at all? I shouldn’t exist if I have no past.”

“That,” Becker said gravely, “has given me a great deal of thought. And I dread to put into words the conclusion I came to. I pray that I’m wrong.”

* * * *

That evening when Meissner entered the bathroom and looked into the mirror his reflection was awe-inspiring. The swelling in his face had puffed up his lips, and spread his nostrils, giving a flattened, apelike cast to his features. His beard had grown in surprisingly fast; the whiskers had crept up closer to his eyes and down his neck until there was no break between the whisker line and the long hair on his chest. His eyebrows were heavier and longer, and his forehead appeared narrower.

The grimace he gave at the sight of his reflection drew his thick lips back into a snarl, and his eyeteeth stood out like fangs. His expression was entirely brutish.

That night Meissner was tossed by the fever and his whole body became one twitching, itching torment. He scratched continuously until he was sore and raw-fleshed in a dozen places.

When he could stand the misery no longer, he attempted to call to Becker. But his lips and tongue refused to form words, as though dulled by long disuse. At last he forced out a shout. “Becker! Becker!” he called hoarsely. “Help me!”

Becker entered at his second call, drawing his bathrobe about him. He looked at Meissner with grave concern, but without surprise.

“Can’t you stop this god-awful itching?” Meissner asked. “It’s driving me mad. I can’t stand much more of it.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Becker said. He went into the bathroom and returned quickly with a jar of ointment. “Can you take your pajamas off by yourself?” he asked.

“I think so,” Meissner answered. As he pulled his pajama top over his head Meissner looked down at his bare body. The skin was coarse tissued, gray and dead looking—except the patches of raw red flesh which he had scratched bare. When he touched the skin he felt a morbid chill—and yet it was dry and flaky.

“What’s happened to me, Becker?” he asked, turning his bloodshot eyes up to the doctor. Suddenly, self-pity overcame him and he started to cry.

Obviously embarrassed, Becker did not speak. He avoided meeting Meissner’s pleading, tearful look.

“For God’s sake, if you know, tell me!” Meissner cried.

Becker drew in a deep breath. “I think I do know, Arthur,” he said slowly. “Do you really want me to tell you?”

Meissner nodded, his voice muted by what he read in Becker’s expression.

“Is your mind clear enough to understand everything I say?” Becker asked.

“It’s not too clear,” Meissner answered. “Things keep coming and going. Sometimes I’m not even sure who I am, or what I’m doing here.”

“Do you remember the last time we talked—when you asked how you could exist at all if you were a man without a past?”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“Then I think you should have an explanation; at least what I believe it is. To give you this answer, I will have to be brutally frank. Maybe I’m wrong to tell you, but in all fairness, if you want it you shall have it.”

Fear crawled along Meissner’s skin like a live thing. He did not know what was coming, but he realized that whatever it was it would be terrible to hear. He stared at Becker with a helpless appeal, but said nothing.

“In past ages,” Becker said, “inanimate matter in some way became impregnated with life force, and through the eons it moved, through its slow evolutionary process, to its present stage of development. The crux of your whole difficulty is that, according to nature, you should not be existing now, as you have no past, and therefore are not a result of that evolutionary process. You constitute a contradiction which must be remedied. It is moving now to eliminate the error you represent—by sending you back through that evolutionary process.

“If you remember, the last time you looked into a mirror your features were hairy and bestial. Now the hair has started to leave your body, and scales are taking its place. The twitching and itching you feel on your skin is due to its cellular change.” Once again Becker paused and gazed pityingly at the man before him. “I know this is an awful thing to tell you,” he said, “but, as I mentioned before, I believe you are entitled to hear it. Lord knows it cannot make your difficulty much worse than it is now.” Despite the shock of the doctor’s words, small segments of reason still clung to Meissner’s brain. “But that evolutionary process took millions of years. If what you say is true, why is the reverse going so swiftly?”

“Nature is hurrying to rectify its disorder. You are not only returning quickly, but I am certain that the rate of retrogression is one of a geometrically, rather than an arithmetically, increasing rate. In other words, if you started going back at the rate of—say, two thousand years a minute—the second minute you returned at the rate of four thousand years a minute; the third minute, eight thousand; the fourth, sixteen thousand; and so on. That’s why I believe you do not have much longer to live. I wish to heaven there was some way I could help you. But I am powerless.”

The sickness that had been gathering in Meissner’s throat rose up and engulfed him in a great black mass of unconsciousness.

Sometime later awareness returned to Meissner’s conscious mind, spurred by the immediacy of a desire—a need—that could not be denied. He had to have water!

Arising from his bed he staggered into the bathroom and filled the wash bowl with water from its cold faucet. He buried his bald, gray, scaly head in the water and gulped in great swallows of the precious liquid.

But still his need was not satisfied. Straightening up from the bowl he let his myopic gaze wander about the room, until it rested on the bathtub. For a long moment he regarded it before the logic of its function became evident. Then he turned on both faucets of the tub, and crawled in. He did not remove the clothing he wore.

The warm water embosomed Meissner’s throbbing body, and he felt a soft glow of tranquility his first peace and satisfaction since the start of his horrible ordeal. For short periods he immersed his head in the water, and while he held it there his limbs fluttered idly, with a placid quiescence. He was content.

With the contentment came a bestial cunning—and a bestial decision!

The thing that pulled itself from the tub bore little semblance to a human being. Its animal cunning directed it as it fumbled at the catch on the medicine cabinet door—until it had solved the method of its opening.

It was quiet now. Quiet with the deceptive guile of a primitive thing. Among the bottles and implements in the medicine cabinet it found a pair of scissors. It clutched them like a dagger in its webbed hand and stood swaying slowly—back and forth.

During a long minute of indecision its gaze returned to the tub with its lure of the water it needed—longingly. But its resolution returned to its stronger impellation—revenge—and soon its purpose was once again, firmly, fixed in mind.

It did not know why it must do this: that it was caught in the grasp of a psychological compulsion stronger than its elementary reasoning power. It only knew that it associated its pain with the being who had explained its cause. As such it must kill that being.

Slowly it dragged its gross body across the bathroom floor and out the door.

The evolutionary change in its tissues was an agonizing thing now. Its outer wrapping no longer merely twitched and itched. Rather, it writhed and cracked with the terrible abruptness of its structural changes. Blood ran sluggishly from the raw breaks in its lacerated flesh.

At the doorway to Becker’s room it leaned against the doorframe, gathering its rudimentary wits, while the counter-evolutionary process coursed with lightning speed through its tissues. Only one spark of reason burned: it must kill! It must plunge its daggerlike shears into the form that breathed on the bed before it.

It attempted to step forward, but during its long pause the lower appendages on its carcass had joined and now formed one solid extension of its trunk. It could no longer walk!

It fell, face forward.

The sound of its fall startled Becker into an upright position. He reached up and snapped on his light. At the foot of his bed something struggled and made moist, suckling sounds with its mouth. Becker looked down.

“My God!” he said. The thing that lay on the floor inched painfully toward him. It twisted and crawled. And twisted and crawled. And twisted…

THE ANCESTRAL THREAD, by Emil Petaja

Originally publshed in Amazing Stories, May 1947.

“How about taking in the baseball game out at Poinsettia Playground, Sydney, old kidney?”

I twirled my natty straw hat, and looked down at Susie May’s eleven year old nephew hopefully.

She had sent me over to take care of him this beautiful Sunday afternoon. His pa and ma had left town and were afraid to leave him alone. He had been acting peculiar lately. They were worried.

He ignored me.

He only stared out of the window of their big, ancient, atrocious Alvarado Street house, his mind a million miles away.

“Maybe the movies?” I tried again, with a playful jab in the ribs. “There’s a killer-diller at the Westlake.”

No answer.

Sydney sat on the window seat in the front hall. His little hand was propped under his chin; his sandy hair drooped carelessly almost over his heavy horn-rimmed spectacles; his boyish lips were a grim thoughtful line.

Rodin’s “Thinker” popped into my mind. A young Thinker, that hadn’t grown up yet.

“Hmmm,” I said, reading the title of the book Syd had been reading and which was lying open nearby. “Prof. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Hmmm… You do pick ’em deep, don’t you, Syd, old kid!”

At this he turned his head. He eyed me frowningly. His eyes were blue, cold blue. I felt abashed under their penetrating scrutiny. And Sydney’s thick specs made them look twice as big, and sort of uncanny. Especially on an eleven year old boy.

“Who are you?” Susie May’s nephew asked. “And what do you want?”

Well! Right then you could have knocked me down with a fender. I’d given up my only free day in the week to entertain this brat of a nephew, and had stood there ten minutes twirling my straw hat and making suggestion after suggestion for a gay and carefree afternoon.

“Come out of the clouds, kiddo. You know me!” I tried to sound gruff.

“Oh, Uncle Lemuel Mason. To be sure.” He gave off a slow grave smile. “You must forgive my seeming discourtesy in permitting my mental preoccupation to prelude prepension while you were—”

“It’s all right,” I grinned, ruffling his sandy hair. “Think nothing of it.”

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. So this was part of his odd behavior—talking like a pint-size Thesaurus.

“Well, Syd,” I added, in a moment. “What’s the verdict? Baseball, movies, or—?”

He shook his head.

“They have no appeal for me,” he smiled. “I’d be much better occupied in perusing Einstein further, or—”

“Or what?” I asked in astonishment, as he hesitated.

“Or working in my laboratory. Mentally I’ve been mulling over a furtherance of my own Theory of Mental Progression, which even in its present embryonic stages may well change the whole course of my highly significant experimentations.”

And he never cracked a smile when he said it!

I sat down. I had to, I was that dumbfounded.

“Er… Tell me about it,” I gasped uneasily, when I caught my breath.

“Afraid you wouldn’t understand, Uncle Lem.” Syd shook his head and again emitted that grave professorial smile. “It is far too involved. Even I—”

Even he…

I had to laugh then. It was too much.

Sydney and I weren’t what you’d call bosom pals, but in the few times I’d talked with him before he had struck me as a perfectly normal though bright young fellow. A little given to imaginative reading maybe. But nothing like this!

“Come on outside in the fresh air, Syd. You’ve had your little joke.” I took his hand, and tugged him off his perch. “We’ll take a nice walk around the park, and decide what we want to do.”

“You—you don’t believe me—either?” His boyish treble accused, as he pulled his hand out of mine. His big eyes held an unhappy vexed look.

I had better humor him, I determined. These little mental quirks can develop into pure unadulterated buggyness if not handled delicately.

“Sure I do.” I essayed a smile, and again urged him toward the sunlight that blinked through the green leaves outside the open door.

“Wait a minute!”

Sydney’s face reddened with anger and excitement.

“I’m getting sick and tired of all this small-minded treatment!” he went on, his boy’s voice quivering. “Heretofore I’ve kept my experiments to myself, but now it’s high time I told somebody. Uncle Lem Mason,” he ended on a note of high command. “You follow me upstairs—to my laboratory in the attic!”

What else could I do?

He leaped up the stairs like a gazelle, and I trotted after, more like a pack mule.

Sydney shut the attic door behind us, and switched on some lights.

I rubbered around me.

The attic was one whopping big room. Over in one corner was a long porcelain topped work bench that appeared to have known long usage. It was littered with motley junk, both tools for working with metals, as well as scientific chemistry apparati.

Opposite this versatile work bench was a gargantuan machine. That’s all I could call it. It might have been a threshing machine or a Rube Goldberg salad mixer, for all the sense it made to me. But it was, I could see, equipped with dials, levers, and gauges, and in front of it was a curious metal chair that faced two metal handles.

Most of the attic was dusty and cob-webbed, as though it hadn’t been used for many years, but the machine and the work bench were spic and span. The metal gleamed, and the glass showed evidence of recent polishing.

“Don’t tell me you built all this!” I exclaimed incredulously, as Syd busied himself about the place in a proprietary manner.

“Certainly not,” he denied.

“Who did?”

“Professor Maximillian Leyton.”

Syd began. “He owned and lived in this old house for over twenty years. Until he disappeared very mysteriously some fifteen years back.

“His heirs, who lived in the East and had had little or nothing to do with the old scientist in many decades, got the property off their hands as soon as they legally could. They sold it to my father, sight unseen.

“Old Leyton had conducted a lot of unprecedented experiments in his laboratory at one of the big California colleges, and was considered a little wacky. This led to his dismissal. He became very misanthropic, and worked up here in this attic all alone, allowing no one up here, not even his housekeeper.

“Apparently Leyton hadn’t a friend or confidante in the whole world. Occasionally he was in the habit of making trips to various parts of the country, and when he vanished nobody cared much, thinking he had disappeared by preference. The attic was boarded up, and his efforts here dismissed as so much junk…”

“No!” I grinned.

Syd’s young-old eyes gave me an icy massage.

“The machine was so bulky that my father didn’t bother to have it moved, so it was left here. We didn’t use the attic anyway.

“But one rainy afternoon last April I was wandering around the old dark halls up here, playing Daniel Boone stalking a bear.” Syd smiled crookedly. “You see, I was only a child then, with a child’s mental limitations—”

“What do you think you—”

“Quiet!” Syd snapped, like a grand-pop at a seven-year-old. “In my play, I kicked loose one of the boards over the attic door, managed to work the lock open, and squeezed my way in.

“I discovered the machine, all covered with dust. And this machine has changed everything for me. Everything.”

“How?” I ventured.

He was so in earnest I didn’t feel like laughing any more.

Syd’s exaggerated optics burned into mine, like cold blue flames, radiant with knowledge.

“The machine has shown me all there is to know about myself,” the wonder boy said. “From the furthest roots of my pre-human ancestry, to the high-point in the life of my great grand-son!”

All I could do was give out a shrill whistle, and sit myself down on an old apple box.

Sydney paid me little heed. He walked briskly over to the huge machine, and started the thing to humming by twisting various dials, and throwing a switch.

For a few minutes he was absorbed in his amazing child’s play, then he perched himself on the work bench and went on with his story:

“I have always been possessed of an overwhelming curiosity, even as a boy of eleven,” the boy of eleven said serenely. “So I poked about this machine after wiping the dust off, and twisted dials, and pulled levers, wondering what on earth its purpose might be. Nothing happened.

“Then it occurred to me to hunt for an explanation in the drawers of the work bench. I wiped away more dust, and kept searching around, day after day.

“You see, I was getting over the mumps, and wasn’t allowed to go to school. I had all day to spend up here in the attic, and try to solve this perplexing mystery.

Finally, one day, I discovered a notebook, filled with almost illegible writing. I couldn’t make much out of the writing, since Professor Leyton was anything but methodical. He seems to have worked pell-mell. Everything indicates that. I doubt that anybody could successfully build another machine like this one from his insufficient notes.

“But there was a diagram of the machine in the notebook, and some instructions for its operation noted thereon. Or course it took my child-mind days to make any headway in my attempts to read it and comprehend these instructions. But somehow I did.

“Mostly it was by accident.

“I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what would happen to me when I tried the machine, but I was all for plunging ahead. So one bright Spring day I sat down on that metal chair, after taking a capsule from the box I found with the notebook as directed in the diagram, and turned dials, then threw the switch, and waited excitedly for what might occur…”

“So what did happen?”

Sydney smiled.

“First nothing. So I tried again. And again. Then little by little I discovered what I’d been doing wrong, and revised my attempts accordingly.

“For instance, I discovered that my hands were to keep holding on the two bright metal handles directly in front of the chair until the machine had made contact with my mind. A series of wave-like shocks passed up my little arms and into my body.

“I was frightened. I tried to let go of the handles, but they stuck as if glued.

“I felt I couldn’t bear it much longer. A terrifying vertigo seemed to be sweeping me on and out of my body. I swooped through time and space, as though on a cosmic roller-coaster.”

“What happened? I panted, rocking on my apple box.

“I passed out…”

* * * *

“‘When I came out of it,” Syd continued in his boyish treble, “the vertigo had passed. My hands still gripped the handles, but my mind was clear, very clear. And it was filled with phantasmagoric bits of new knowledge, as if it had been dipped in some cosmic mind-pool.

“For instance, I knew which dial I should turn now, and that the lever on my extreme right would automatically shut the whole machine off, should that be necessary.

“But I didn’t want the machine off. I wanted to test its full powers.

“I found that now I could lift one hand off the handle and still maintain contact. So I twisted one of the two large dials directly above the handles. The one clumsily marked ‘Back’. I turned it two notches only.

“Immediately I wasn’t in the attic any longer…

“I was in an old-fashioned office, sitting behind a big desk, with a cigar in my mouth, and my feet propped up on a waste basket. I was grown up, and dressed in a funny tight-trousered suit of loud checks. I wore a black mustache that curled up at the ends. I stroked it from time to time, very proudly.

“I was talking, dictating a letter to a pretty girl whose chestnut hair was wrapped into a weird bun at the back of her neck. She was dressed in a prim white shirt-waist and ankle-length skirt that fell over high button shoes.

“You must understand, that while suddenly I was this old-time gentleman, seeing what he saw through his eyes, hearing what he heard, and feeling what he felt; at the same time I was powerless to direct his movements. I played the role of a mental kibitzer.

“The girl kept saying, ‘Yes, Mister Rayson.’

“My own mind was able to wonder about this. I am Sydney Rayson. My father is Mister Rayson. My grandfather was Mister—

“I was on the point of solving this riddle, when the man that was me for the moment got up, tossed his cigar into a nearby cuspidor, and took the girl in his arms. She didn’t seem to mind. She blushed even prettier when he kissed her.

“‘Not Mister Rayson,’ he admonished. ‘Malcolm.’

“Just then the door behind them opened. A large, over-dressed woman blew in. She was full of dangerous curves, but it seemed to me that three pigeons on her hat was just a little too many.

“‘Well!’ she cried. ‘So this is how you behave behind your fiancée’s back, you cad. Take that! And that!’

“The first that was a hefty clout on the ear. The second was a ring which she removed from her fat finger and flung in his face, nearly knocking an eye out.

“The door banged behind her, smashing the glass. Malcolm Rayson sighed, a relieved sort of sigh, and continued where he had left off when so violently interrupted…”

“Who was this guy Malcolm?” I, Lem Mason, asked this precocious nephew.

“My grandfather, of course!” Syd proclaimed. “His name was Malcolm, and he married his secretary, although at one time he was engaged to his boss’s voluptuous daughter.”

“How come you lived in his mind? What’s this machine for?” I quizzed. “And why that particular moment?”

“If you’ll allow me to finish!” Syd growled, falsetto. “So after this little incident was over I found myself slowly fading out of Malcolm Rayson’s mind, and returning to my own body here in the attic.

“I pulled down the lever that shut the machine off, and called it a day…

“Now, to answer your questions,” said this amazing quiz kid. “I lived in my grandfather’s mind for a while because that is the function of this machine—to open up unused portions of the mind where ancestral memories are stored, and to let you relive these memories as in a three-dimensional motion picture. I turned the dial two notches—thus, two generations back.

“And the reason I relived that particular moment is because that memory is the strongest in grandfather’s portion of the ancestral thread of memory. In grandfather’s mind that memory stood out ahead of all others. It was transmitted in the genes, or inheritable elements, to my father, who in turn transmitted it to me.

“In subsequent experiments, I found that it was always the high-point in each ancestor’s life that the machine was able to pick up and recreate.”

I found an apple on the work bench, and nibbled on it thoughtfully. As I nibbled and thought I stared at Professor Leyton’s ancestral juke-box, that Syd had prodded into action.

“Do tell,” I murmured, still, incredulous. “And did you relive any more high-points in your ancestors’ lives? Further back?”

“Certainly,” Syd retorted calmly. “Many of them.”

“Tell me about ’em.”

“I can’t. It would take days, there were so many, some of them so very complex…

“For instance, there was Abigail Georgie Rayson, my great-great grandmother, who was subjected to the ducking stool back in Colonial days, for talking in church. That was the most vivid, embarrassing moment of her life.

“There was an English ancestor, Sir Hamilton Fiske-Rayeson, who died in the War of the Roses; there was Agnes Rurrson, who was forcibly wedded to a tyrannical Roman general; there was Caracalla, the blood-lusty Roman Emperor, whose appearance in the family ancestral thread springs from no pretty scene; there was Latoto, a slave in ancient Babylon.

“And further back—dwellers in cities that have crumbled into dust, and are now not even listed in the archives of archeology.

“Back, back, back—to ancestors that cowered in cliff caves, conversing in grunts and growls, shivering with terror when the hooves of the mastodons trampled above their heads like thunder.

“And even further back…”

I blinked.

“Further back? What could be further back than the cavemen?”

Syd’s big eyes seemed to be seeing it all again, as he spoke:

“Back to midnight shapes that swung from tree to tree with hairy agile arms; back to things that lumbered over steaming hills and made outlandish unhuman noises; back to things that slithered on their loathesome bellies through primordial slimes…”

“My goodness,” I hissed. “You did go back!”

My tone seemed to irritate Susie May’s nephew. He turned on me sharply.

“You don’t believe me!” he accused, pointing a little smutty finger at me.

“Well,” I admitted. “It’s a lot to swallow all in one lump. And here’s another thing, I seem to remember you making a crack about your great-grandson. Just where does he come into the three-dimensional motion picture?”

“Ah,” Syd sighed, with some satisfaction. “Then at least I know you were listening, not daydreaming. But you seem to have forgotten one little detail—the second big dial, the one marked ‘Ahead’!”

“What about it?”

“That dial brought my mind in contact with high-points in my future generations’ lives!”

* * * *

“Are you kidding?” That was all I could think to snort.

He ignored my flippancy. He talked on as though to himself. I champed on my apple, and listened, squinting over at him in righteous doubt.

“You see, lame-brain, Professor Leyton’s astonishing purpose seems to have been to accumulate all the knowledge he could, both past and present. Unfortunately for him, his very greed for knowledge was his own undoing. He didn’t realize the danger he was putting himself in.

“Nor did I…”

“Having plumbed the depths of the past, I was all for venturing into the undiscovered realms of the future.

“First—my son. The episode which I—”

“Hold on a minute!” I roared, in protest. “How could any memory from your son’s mind be inherited backwards?”

Syd smiled gravely.

“I thought you’d catch that obvious flaw,” he sighed. “But tell me this, Uncle Lem—how did you know it couldn’t? How do you, or I, for that matter, know what Time is. If Time is accepted as another dimension, then obviously Time exists all at once in some way that our three-dimensional minds are incapable of grasping. Such a theory being accepted, there is no ‘backward’ or ‘forward’ actually. Only now. Now! NOW!

“Does that hint at some explanation?”

I frowned horribly. “Not much.” Although the whole thing was beginning to give me a headache, I let him go on with his story.

“Professor Leyton’s machine transcends this three-dimensional fallacy regarding Time, and continues the ancestral thread to its ultimate end.

“My glimpses of the future were far briefer, more blurred and difficult than any past images. In this it may be said that Professor Leyton’s machine was defective.

“My moment in my son’s mind occurred in a lecture room of a large University. He was propounding a new and revolutionary theory, the very theory that I have since been completing, proving. And he was being ridiculed, scoffed at, laughed out of the auditorium.

“This was the result, I guessed, of his lifetime of arduous effort in science. It is my belief that he died a broken and unhappy man. Will die, you might say!

“He left a daughter, a weakly creature who lived only long enough to give birth to a son who carried on the ancestral thread…

“It was my great-grandson whose mind gave me a glorious thrilling glimpse that was the high-point of high-points in my travels up and down the ancestral thread of memory.

“He was an old, old man. He stood, still strong and tall and beautiful, on a glass-like precipice that lipped a skyscraper cliff of the radiant and incredible city of the world of Tomorrow. He stood gazing introspectively down at the leisurely flow of life, both above and below him.

Aircraft of feather lightness and breathtaking design sailed smoothly and silently on their accurate designated courses. Far below, on gardened streets, pedestrians strolled on marbled ramps, while on other levels ground vehicles moved, like the aircraft, swiftly, silently, smoothly.

“It was dusk, and the miraculous city began to take on a warm colorful glow. The air was soft, clean, sweet. From somewhere came music, strange but thrilling.

“My great grandson mused over this paradise world, and over his own small part in its being. He was an old man, but vigorous, and with many happy years ahead of him thanks to supermedical science.

“This was the world that had fought its way out of blood and chaos, in spite of Hitlers and Tojos, as a wonderful flower fights its way toward the sun, out of fog and dung and noisome weeds…

* * * *

“You spoke of danger,” I said gently, breaking into Syd’s reverie.

“Yes.” He broke out of his ecstatic mood. “The danger that lurked in the machine’s shortcomings, and in Leyton’s insatiable curiosity.

“The world of my great grandson was so beautiful to me that I couldn’t resist the desire to see even further into the future. I snapped the ‘Ahead’ dial ahead—

“Then it happened! My mind whirled, as if caught in some tremendous cosmic vortex. I almost lost consciousness. My head throbbed. Then it was as if a million sharp needles were plunged into it.

“Warned of impending disaster, I grabbed hold of the lever at my right, and pulled it down, shutting off the machine.

“When I was able to think clearly again, I found that something amazing had happened to my mind…”

I nodded my head sadly at that. I could well believe it!

“My mind,” Syd went on, eyeing me sternly, “had developed into a supermind. Knowledge from future generations had leaked into it. I found myself able to solve profound mental problems with ease.

“I was, in point of fact, mentally over a hundred years old—not eleven!”

“Well, I swan!” I exclaimed.

“You goose.” Syd quipped dryly. “And so the defectiveness of Professor Leyton’s machine proved of colossal benefit to me. He wasn’t so lucky, however.”

“What do you mean by that?” I queried.

“Understand, I’m only guessing. But all the evidence points to this…

“Professor Leyton managed to get his machine to bring his mind in contact with the far distant future. He voyaged mentally millions of years into what we call future time, along the ancestral thread.

“He didn’t give a tinker’s dam about the world of his day and didn’t breathe a word of his discovery to anyone. He just stayed up here alone, plunging further and further.

“He was insatiable. He trekked the furthest reaches of his future ancestors’ mind-lives; and then to ancestors that no longer were men at all! What gigantic secrets he learned will never be known. Then, at last, at the very end of time itself—”

Syd broke off with a strangely gruff sigh.

“What happened to him?” I breathed, feeling my skin crawl at the thought of anyone seeing the very end of Time.

Syd got up from where he’d been sitting on the edge of the work bench, and motioned me to come over to the machine. I tossed my apple core away, and walked over.

Syd pointed down under the metal chair that fronted the weird machine, at a large roundish stain. It was an unpleasant blotch, green and brown, soaked indelibly into the unpainted floor-wood of the attic.

“That, I think,” said Syd dramatically, “is Professor Leyton!”

I leaped back a step, uttering a squawk. Then, gulping, I went back to my apple box.

“Now what?” I said, anxious to shake the attic’s dust off my heels. “We can still make the baseball game if—”

“Baseball!” Syd snorted. “You, Lem Mason, are going to sit down on the metal chair. You don’t believe anything I’ve told you, so I’m going to prove it to you! I’m going to send your mind back into the past, along your ancestral thread!”

I bounded up.

“Me?” I squeaked. “I should say not! Why, Syd, I-I-I believe you. Sure I-I-I do.”

I made for the attic door.

“No you-you-you don’t. Come back here, you coward!” His voice was scornful. His arms were crossed, like a gestapo leader’s.

“Who’s a coward?” I protested weakly. “But, Syd, how about Professor Leyton—he’s only a blob on the barroom, I mean attic, floor. I don’t relish the thought of being a blob on—”

“It happened because he tried to delve too far into the future,” Syd snapped. “Besides—you don’t believe any of my story! You think I’m wacky! How could a machine that an eleven-year-old boy whipped up out of tin cans and old bottle caps hurt you?”

He sounded very contemptuous and sarcastic.

I didn’t say a word, but I was thinking lots. Maybe that machine was made by Professor Leyton, like Syd said. But maybe working with it had unhinged his mind, made him a bit pixilated. Gosh, I didn’t want to rush home to Susie May talking like a man from the Moon!

Still and all, the last thing I remembered Susie May saying to me was, “Humor him, Lem, dear. Play any kind of games he wants you to. He’s a sensitive child. All he needs is to be understood.”

Understood! How could I understand all his high-falutin’ double-talk about ancestral threads? Gosh, I’m only a humble bookkeeper down at Mammoth Cement.

I sniffed uncomfortably, then turned and shuffled slowly back to the machine. Syd stood there with his arms crossed, like a Spanish inquisitor.

“Okay,” I muttered unhappily. I sat down gingerly on the metal seat. “Only not too fast. I can’t stand to go too fast.” My own words made me giggle nervously.

“Take this capsule,” Syd ordered, handing me an ominous green pill.

I tried to swallow it, choked over it, coughed, sputtered, and slapped my knee. The capsule stuck in my throat, poised, then dropped. I looked at Syd with reproachful tear-filled eyes.

“How far back would you like to go, Uncle Lem?” he asked, kindly.

“Lemme see,” I pondered, half-believing I could. “Oh, yes—two notches back, please. Grandpop was supposed to be a rootin’ tootin’ bad man in some old Western town. He was a real tough guy called Fearless Murgatroyd, with a blazing six-gun in each hand, and everybody scared to death when he swaggered through town. Be nice to visit him, huh?”

* * * *

“Certainly,” Syd agreed gravely.

So I grabbed hold of the two metal handles in front of me, while Syd managed the dials and levers. And then suddenly I was whirling, dipping, sliding, falling—as if I was riding all the concessions down at the beach at once.

“Yeow!” I yelled, trying to let go. But I couldn’t. The handles stuck as if glued to me.

Blurredly I saw Syd adjust dials.

Then all was blackness for a while.

Somebody had hold of me from the back, and swung me through the air and bounced me onto the hard ground.

I squirmed and struggled, and gurgled and guggled. The person who had hold of me by the top of my britches laughed. It was a rasping, sneery laugh.

And that laugh was echoed on all sides.

Everything was still black. Then, my eyes were opened.

I blinked.

A bright golden light blinded me. The sun. The hot noonday sun of the desert.

I was talking, jabbering at a terrific pace. Or at least the body I had intruded into was jabbering. It was ranting, begging, pleading.

“Don’t do it!” grandpop (I supposed it to be he) kept screaming in deathly terror. “Don’t hang me!”

“Heh, heh,” chuckled the geezer who dandled grandpop up and down by the top of his dusty blue pants. “Nah, we won’t string him up, will we, fellers? Heh, heh!”

That heh-heh was an evil heh-heh. And the words only served to scare grandpop worse.

I gandered around me, through grandpop’s eyes.

Where was I? I wondered. And what was the reason for all this stringing up of grandfathers?

Fearless Murgatroyd, alias grandpop, was the central figure of a little knot of evilly heh-hehing miners and cattlemen in loud shirts, dusty overall pants, and greasy hats. Fearless Murgatroyd was a little runt, with a wisp of a straw mustache that quivered like an aspen leaf, right now.

The group of men and their horses stood under a huge dead, though staunch, oak tree that had a heavy low-hanging branch. That branch was significant.

Half a mile back along the horse-trail was a drowsy little desert town, sleeping in the sun.

It was plain as a pikestaff that grandpop had been jogged along that trail from town, yanked off his horse by the big galoot under this tree ceremoniously; and it was obvious to the veriest dunce that Fearless Murgatroyd was the unhappy nucleus of an old-fashioned necktie party.

Some high-point in my ancestral thread I had picked out!

Had I been master of my soul at that moment, I would have joyously winged my way back to my original Lem Mason body and thanked my lucky stars that the “good old days” were gone forever. But that, alas, was not in my power.

Meanwhile Fearless Murgatroyd kept on begging and pleading in a steady incoherent babble, his bony knees failing under him every now and then. The big galoot kept him from sinking to the ground in a miserable heap.

“Don’t ha-ha-hang me!” he bleated.

Over and over and over. I wanted finally to yell out, your point is made, pass on to something else!

I could see that these brown-skinned, horny-handed, dirty-booted blockheads were getting a great big bang out of the fuss grandpop was kicking up. It was quite a picnic.

They laughed and laughed. The big galoot laughed loudest of all.

The horses champed dispiritedly at the straggly clumps of grass that spotted the desert’s edge, flecking flies off their rumps with their tails and eyeing the proceedings with great disinterest.

I had solved the problem of where I was, more or less, and what was up. But the question of why still worried me. What had Fearless Murgatroyd done to deserve such an ignominious fate?

“Grandpop, you old fraud!” I wanted to yell. “What are you doing here, when you should be shooting up towns and scaring people to death, instead of shivering like a licked pup?”

“Karp,” the galoot who was holding Fearless Murgatroyd up, uncomfortably, wanted to know. “Yu got the rope ready?”

“Yep,” a bleary-eyed critter with two front teeth missing replied, with a grin. He held up a lasso that he had transformed into a knotted strangler.

“Toss it up over thet branch, Karp. An’ tie it tuh one of the horses.” The galoot was evidently in charge.

“Shore nuff, Sampson.”

Fearless Murgatroyd’s fascinated eyes watched the rope swing over the branch that was ideal for their purpose, and watched Karp tie it deftly to the saddle of his horse.

“Think it’ll hold him?” somebody in the back row speculated.

“This yere runt?” Sampson scoffed, bouncing grandpop up and down like a puppet. “Sakes! It held thet two-twenty pound outlaw Eagle-beak Larmont last week, didn’t it?”

“Real purty hangin’ it was,” somebody else reminisced. “Not quite so hot as ’tis today.”

There was but one word for it, and that was—ghoulish.

I shivered, longing to be back in the attic, back in my own body. Horrible thoughts plagued me. Thoughts about Professor Leyton, the smear on the attic floor.

And there was little Syd’s mental transformation, too. What sinister thing might happen to me? When grandpop died, wouldn’t I die too?

Fearless Murgatroyd bawled like a newly born doggie when Sampson swung him over into position for the kill.

Grandpop wriggled and twisted helplessly as he dropped the noose over his head. Then, carefully, as if he was trimming a birthday cake, Sampson tightened the knot in place and got everything in apple-pie order.

“I ain’t had no proper trial!” Fearless bawled, tears streaming down his dirty face, into his mustache.

“Ain’t we just giv yu a trial?” Karp retorted. “An’ didn’t yu admit yu stole them hosses offa Pete Morrison?”

“I stole ’em. Yu can tell thet from the brand.” Fearless was repentant and anxious to save his hide any possible way. “He can take ’em back, and mine too. Only, leave me go this time fellas. I won’t do it again, honest.”

He ended off in a doleful blubbering.

“Sorry, Murg,” Sampson said, with a wink at the others. “F’it was only one hoss we maybe could see our way clear to let yu go. But three hosses is too many!”

“We cain’t do it!”

And then they were silent. Ominously silent.

Grandpop Fearless shut his eyes tight, as he had on the horse ride to his doom. As for me, I was as good as dead already.

But the death jolt didn’t come. Apparently the audience hadn’t enjoyed the suspense quite to its furthest stretching point yet. They wanted to prolong their fun.

“Yu see, Murg, yu ol’ coyote,” Sampson broke the silence, poking Fearless in the ribs until he opened his eyes. “It ain’t only the hosses. It’s the lies yu go spreading around these hyar parts. Lies thet yur such a tough hombre, and how the rest of us is allus crawlin’ tu yu on our bellies. We don’t hanker much for thet kind of talk, Murg.”

“I won’t do it any more! Honest!” Fearless whined.

“I’ll say yu won’t!”

Fearless shivered violently. His cracked lips emitted a weird moan.

“Now say, just say fur instance, Murg—if we did let yu go—would you stop all this year swell-headed braggin’ and boastin’. An’ quit callin’ yourself Fearless Murgatroyd?”

Fearless could hardly believe his ears. Nor could I hardly believe his ears. “W-W-What?” he squeaked.

Sampson repeated. A guffaw was unleashed from back of them.

“Yessir. Yessir. Yessir!” Fearless bobbed his head up and down until he all but strangled himself with the noose that circled his neck. “I—I—I’d go far away! I wouldn’t call myself nuthin’. I—I—I wouldn’t brag about nuthin’. I wouldn’t hardly even say nuthin’!”

Sampson seemed to weigh this in his mind.

“What say, fellers,” he said at last. Shall we let Murg off if he promises to behave himself, an’ go away, an’ not brag about hisself any more?”

Grandpop’s eyes searched the mob’s anxiously.

“Shore,” Karp spoke up. “Put Murg onto his hoss, and tell him to high-tail it out of these parts for good!”

Several voices affirmed this suggestion.

So Sampson lifted the rope from around Fearless Murgatrayd’s throat, and allowed him to wipe the tears and sweat off his face with his blue bandana.

Then the burly leader swung grand-pop up on his horse.

“Thanks, fellas,” Fearless muttered weakly.

Sampson’s riding whip touched the horse’s flank, and away rode Fearless.

Away into the desert. Away from the tree of evil fruit. Away like the wind, in a cloud of desert dust…

* * * *

“Aaahhhh!” I sighed, coming out of the past.

It had seemed hours, but in reality had all taken place in a few minutes. A very crucial few minutes.

“Now do you believe me?” Syd demanded, as I tottered up from the metal chair.

I felt of my arms and my legs, and my neck. Especially my neck. They were okay. I was back safe and sound, just as I had been before, except for the knowledge of that awful experience back in the days of the wild and woolly west.

“Yes,” I had to say. “I believe you, Syd. But you’ll never get me to sit in that chair again! No, sir!”

I started to tell Syd what had happened to me, but he didn’t seem much interested. He was fussing with test tubes full of chemicals, pouring them into different glass parts of the machine.

“Shut up, Uncle Lem,” he told me. “I’m concentrating. Yes. Yes.”

He went on muttering and working this way for some time, ignoring my existence.

“It’s done!” he yelled at last.

“What’s done?”

“Listen, Uncle Lem,” Syd cried, his eyes glowing excitedly. “I’ve managed to repair the damage Professor Leyton did to the machine when he went into the future too far.”

“I’ve refueled it, so to speak. Now I think that I can go further into the future myself, further than just three generations. That’s nothing to the wonders I’ll see now!”

“Now?” I repeated.

“I’m ready to try it right now!”

“No, Syd,” I said, taking hold of his arm. “Too much is really enough. Don’t tempt Fate. I mean, let well enough alone, and come downstairs with me. I’ll buy us some ice cream. No. No, Syd. Remember Professor Leyton, the smear on the—”

“Quiet!” Syd snapped. He swallowed a capsule, and sat down in the metal chair, grabbing the handles. “You stand by, Uncle Lem. Watch out for any trouble that might develop.”

“But I don’t know anything about—” I protested.

Syd didn’t even hear me. He was already under the spell of the machine—traveling up that ancestral thread.

I stood by Syd, whose body became stiff as a board. His eyes became glassy. He looked like a youthful corpse.

I felt very helpless.

I got scared, too, and wanted to do something. But I didn’t know what to do, and was afraid I might do the wrong thing.

So I just stood there, waiting and biting my fingernails.

All of a sudden Syd’s hand moved stiffly up to the “Ahead” dial, and slowly, mechanically, began to turn it.

Click…click…click…

I chewed my nails, and kept my eyes glued on that dial.

* * * *

For quite some time I kept my anxious vigil. My legs prickled, and my hands got stiff. I remembered Professor Leyton’s dreadful fate, and was scared for Syd. He was venturing into that dangerous future territory, where Leyton had met his doom!

And what about me?

Suppose something did happen to Sydney? What would Susie May say? What would the world say? Who would believe my fantastic story?

Likely as not, the papers would refer to me as “The Attic Fiend.”

How would they realize that Syd wasn’t a boy of eleven mentally, but a giant brain who read Einstein, and concocted outlandish theories of his own as well!

Then, suddenly, something went wrong. I could feel it, even before it happened. The machine was acting up!

Syd’s body began to writhe. His lips gave out a rasping sound. He seemed in terrible agony.

Then, visibly, his head began to shrink!

Good Lord! In a few minutes he, too, would be nothing but a blotch on the attic floor!

“Moses on the mountain!” I moaned, waving my arms about helplessly.

Something horrible was occurring. I had to do something. But quick!

But what?

I turned my eyes to the machine. That labyrinth of knobs, dials, levers, switches, bulbs and gauges. Shouldn’t I maybe turn some of them?

In my trembling perplexity I seemed to recall dimly something Syd had said—about a certain lever. The lever that shut the whole machine off…

“My sainted Aunt!”

The machine was growling ominously. And the metal parts were getting red hot. And beginning to sizzle!

Which lever was it? Which one?

Oh yes yes yes. This one over here on the right.

I seized it with both hands, and yanked it down.

Then I grabbed Syd off the metal chair, carried him over to the other side of the room, and set him down gently on the dusty floor.

Not a split-second too soon!

A cacophonic explosion rent the air.

I whirled.

Professor Leyton’s machine was now only a tangled mess of smoking debris. The glass was shattered. The metal middle had burst open, pieces had flown about that side of room pell-mell. The bowels of the machine protruded grotesquely.

I gaped at it imbecilicly.

“Eeeek!” someone screamed shrilly behind me.

I turned sharply.

It was Susie May, framed in the attic doorway, wearing that cockeyed waste basket hat she bought on our honeymoon in Las Vegas.

“Hello, Susie May,” I said. I felt guilty, for some unknown reason.

“Lemuel Mason!” she cried, her eyes popping out of her head almost, at what she saw. “What on earth have you been up to!”

“Nothing,” I said weakly. I waved an arm in protest.

Then Susie May saw Sydney, lying on the dusty floor. She gave out another shriek, and ran to him. She lifted his head and began to stroke his forehead.

“Poor Sydney! He might have been killed by you, and your infernal monkey shines!”

“Me?”

“Get some water, Quick!”

I got some water, quick. But I was speechless. It would be sheer folly to attempt to tell Susie May the truth. All I could do was wait for Sydney to come out of his trance, I hoped, and explain the whole thing. That would prove my innocence of alleged monkey shines.

I looked down at the boy anxiously, while Susie May put her Red Cross nurse’s training to good use. As she bathed his head she heaped a pile of imprecations on mine.

Pretty soon Syd groaned, and opened his eyes.

“Hyah, Aunt Susie May,” he greeted. “Hyah, Uncle Lem.”

“Well, Syd, old kid,” I grinned, lifting him up, and starting to carry him downstairs. “Looks like when you put all those chemicals in the machine you over-juiced it, and made it blow up. Thank goodness it didn’t blow you up!” I was much relieved to see that Syd’s head was normal size again. Maybe I had only imagined it shrinking.

“Anyway,” I went on, “we can go downstairs and read some more Einstein, eh, Syd?”

Syd leaped to the floor.

“Einstein? Machine? What the dickens are you talking so funny for, Uncle Lem?” His eyes became large, furious. “And do you mean to tell me you kept me cooped up in that hot attic all afternoon, fooling around, and missing the Sunday baseball game?”

THE SONS OF JAPHETH, by Richard Wilson

Originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, December 1956.

Infinity Pilot Officer Roy Vanjan happened to be spaceborne when the Earth exploded. In that way, he escaped the annihilation along with one other man, revered old Dr. Garfield Gar, who was in the space station.

Roy had backed well off in preparation for a mach ten dive on Kabul, which the enemy had lately taken over. He had one small omnibomb left in his racks and Kabul had seemed to be about the right size. But then the destruction of Earth changed his plans.

He watched, expressionless, as the planet exploded. He shrugged. There was nothing to do now but go see Dr. Gar.

Roy’s foescope clamored insistently and he tensed, thinking a spaceborne enemy was on him, but it was only a piece of exploding Earth stumbling by.

Dr. Gar was alone in the space station because all able-bodied men had been called to fight World War V. The governments of Earth, in a rare moment of conscience during the Short Truce, had agreed that Dr. Gar, as the embodiment of all Earthly knowledge, should be protected from harm.

Pilot Officer Roy Vanjan didn’t receive as warm a reception from old Dr. Gar as he might have, considering that they were the only two people left. The old man was combing his white beard with his fingers and didn’t offer to shake hands.

“Well,” said Roy as he defused his bomb and secured his single-seater in the spacelock, “I guess it’s all over.”

“Scarcely a historic statement,” Dr. Gar said, “but it describes the situation.”

“If you don’t have anything for me to do I’d just as soon have a drink. They usually let me have a stiff one after I complete a mission.”

Dr. Gar examined the hard young pilot from under shaggy white eyebrows. “I do have another mission for you but you can have a drink first. Peach brandy is all that’s left.”

“That’ll be fine,” Roy said. “I was never particular.”

“Then you’re my man,” Dr. Gar said, giving him a deep look, “because I want you to go back in time and destroy humanity.”

“Whatever you say.” Roy’s training showed. “But if I may comment, wouldn’t that be superfluous? Except for you and me the human race is finished. We’ve achieved our objective.” He spoke without irony.

“Never my objective.”

“I’m not a scholar and I mean no offense,” Roy said, “but I believe it was the coordinated spacial theory you announced back in ’06 that made it possible.”

“Misapplication,” Dr. Gar said wearily, not wanting to go into it further for such an audience. Though, he thought, he’d never have another. “Come into my study and have your brandy.”

* * * *

“I still don’t understand,” Roy said later. He reached tentatively for the bottle. When the old man made no objection he poured a second stiff one.

“You want me to go back in time and wipe out all human life,” Roy said. “I assume you’ll tell me when and where. All right. That would destroy our ancestors and so we’d cease to exist, too. Wouldn’t it be simpler to kill ourselves now? That is, if you see no point to our further existence/’

Old Dr. Gar watched the other remnant of Earthly life twirl the brandy in the goblet. He looked at the viewscreen. It showed a panorama of rock dust and steam where Earth had been.

“You forget that we have annihilated everything,” Dr. Gar said, gazing pensively at the screen. “Mankind, the animals, plant life and the tiny things that creep the earth or swim the waters. Your mission will be more selective.”

“Selective? How?”

“You’ll destroy man, but the rest will live. They may evolve into something better.”

“If you say so, Doctor.” Roy’s devotion to duty was a well-worn path. “Assuming you have the machine and I can operate it.”

“The machine is merely an attachment. It will plug into the instrument panel of your spacecraft. It operates automatically.”

“Good enough. You always were a whiz at these things. How far back do I go? And who do I kill?”

“I want you to strafe the Ark, exercising care not to hurt any of the animals,” said old Dr. Garfield Gar.

“Noah’s Ark?” Pilot Officer Roy Vanjan asked. “You mean during the Flood?”

“‘Yes. I’ve computed it exactly. You won’t have to worry about getting there at the wrong time.”

“You mean after the forty days’ rain, so I’ll have good visibility. Good-o.” He agreed readily and he’d do as the doctor said, of course, but he permitted a trace of skepticism in his inflection and a searching look into his goblet.

“No, not the fortieth day,” Dr. Gar said, “but in what we are told was the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month. The animals need dry land. I have it all figured out.”

“I hope so. I mean I’m sure you have. You’re the doctor, of course, but wasn’t there some doubt about the accuracy of the old Book? I didn’t know you were a fundamentalist.”

“Am I not the repository of all human knowledge?” Dr. Gar asked. He was not a bit angry with Roy Vanjan. “Am I not the last best hope? Has not all else failed us?”

“Well, sure—”

“Did not the Noahic Covenant, under which human government was established, fail? Has not Japhetic science been our undoing?”

Roy looked lost. “I’m no scholar, Doctor.”

“Agreed. But perhaps you’ll grant that I am?” He looked with supreme calm at the young pilot. “I’m your new intelligence officer and you’re merely my striking arm. Help yourself to another brandy, son.”

“Maybe I’d better not. I don’t want to goof the mission.”

“There’s time. You’ll want some sleep first.

“All right. I suppose I’ll need a steady hand to murder Noah and the rest.”

“And Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s wife,” said Dr. Gar, “and the three wives of his sons with them, as it was written. Especially Japheth. But not the animals, remember.”

“I understand that. If you think the Ten Commandments don’t apply. Whichever one of them it was.

“They were an element of the Mosaic Covenant. It, too, failed. Perhaps the Garic Covenant, if I may be so vain, will endure.”

* * * *

The waters covered the Earth.

A moment ago, before he activated the attachment, Pilot Officer Roy Vanjan’s spacecraft had been plunging towards the vortex of a ragged ball of dust and vapor, the destroyed Earth of World War V. Now, in the Adamic Year 601 (or was it the Edenic?—he couldn’t remember, though Dr, Gar had let him study the Book), the waters stretched everywhere. Ahead the sun glinted in reflection from something rising above the surface. Ararat?

He made out the twin peaks. He throttled back to scarcely more than mach one and flew over them, high. His second pass took him back along his own vapor trail. This time he spotted the tiny surface craft making for the solitary bit of land. He had to hand it to Dr. Gar. The old boy’s spaco-time grid had hit it right on the button.

Roy was too high to distinguish details but he imagined that Noah and his family would be on deck, full of the wonder of Mount Ararat rising, as promised, from the sea.

But there was another wonder—the vapor trails that stretched for miles across the upper air. Did they, down there on the Ark, think them a sign of the Lord? Roy smiled ironically. They were a sign of the lord Gar and of his servant, Pilot Officer Vanjan, come to blast them into eternity and change the future, to give the animals a chance.

Who would chronicle his role as the re-arranging angel, the unheavenly host about to gather up in violence the drifting souls below? Who, he wondered. Some simian scribe? Some unborn elephant prophet? An insectate scholar destined to evolve from among the creeping things that would inherit the Earth?

Or perhaps the written word would die unborn under the fiery hail of his guns.

No matter. These questions and more had been anticipated by Dr. Gar. Soon now, at the end of Roy’s strafing run, it would be up to History to begin assembling the answers.

He slowed to mach minus and sent out wings. He would have to dip close to see if the entire Ark’s complement was on deck. The job had to be done right or Earth was kaput. Nothing personal, Noah, old boy.

There they were, on the starboard side of the top deck, well out from under the pitch of the roof, craning their necks for a look at this miracle in the sky w here they had expected to see only a returning dove.

“Behold!” Roy cried out. “I bring you tidings! But not the tidings of the dove. I am your lost raven returned—the raven of death! My tidings are of the new future which your descendants will not know and so will not doom.”

The frightened upturned faces were far behind, and he was talking to himself.

“Hear me, Noah, for I am come to destroy you, and with you your seeds of self-destruction. These are the tidings I bring from the future that has ceased to exist because you existed—the future that will exist once more when you cease to.”

He heeled the spacecraft over and back. No more speeches, he told himself, though he had studied the Book in fascination. He was a killer, not a philosopher.

He would have to make his strafing run low. If he dived on the target his bullets would go into the holds and kill the animals. He roared at the Ark a few feet above the waves.

They were all together in a dump, the eight of them.

Farewell, Noah! he thought as his thumbs pressed on the death-dealing button. Farewell, Noah and Noah’s wife!

Farewell, Ham, and Ham’s wife and unborn sons—farewell, Canaan, and Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut!

Farewell, Shem! And unborn Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram!

And farewell, Japheth, father of sons of science! Farewell, Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras!

Farewell, all tribes. Make way for the animal kingdom in the Garic Covenant.

* * * *

He had made three passes and now he zoomed into the sky. He had destroyed humanity and changed the future.

Or had he? He’d be dead, too, if he had, gone like the snap of a finger with the last gasp from the Ark. He had killed his ancestors. He had killed everybody’s ancestors, but he existed still. Where was the paradox that Dr. Gar had overlooked?

The Ark had drifted closer to the shore. He circled it and counted the lifeless bodies lying in red stains on the gopher wood of the deck. Eight.

Then he noticed the change. The backs of his hands were hairier. His shoes were binding him. When he kicked them off his agile toes curled comfortably around the control pedals. He had a glimpse of a hairy, flat-nosed face reflected in the instrument panel. It laughed and the sound came out a simian yap.

But for all that he was still a sentient being. His control of the spacecraft was as expert as before.

It hadn’t worked.

Do you hear, Dr. Gar? he thought. It’s a flop. I goofed the mission. We’re all dead, no matter what.

I give you a new commandment, man who would be God: Thou shalt not tamper with time.

He had changed the future and in the future he himself had been changed, but not enough. Somewhere below in the hold of the Ark were his ancestors who had evolved along a new path in the new future. The evolution had been slower, perhaps, but it had been as sure, external appearances notwithstanding. Somewhere in the far new future, he was sure, there was a simian Dr. Gar looking down in solitude on the remains of Earth.

The Ark had touched the land. The animals—his fellow creatures—were beginning to go forth, two by two, onto the shore of Ararat.

His foescope set up a clamor. There in the sky was a new thing, a spacecraft like his, yet unlike it. It looked deadlier, more purposeful. Ignoring him, it was diving out of the unknowable future to destroy its own past.

He watched in professional admiration as his fellow pilot screamed unerringly for the Ark in sacrificial completion of the mission he himself had failed to accomplish. Death to the animals, too—from an animal pilot.

He knew then that Earth would not die. It might circle lifeless for eons, waiting to welcome the foot—or paw, or tentacle—of others from outside. But it would be there, intact and serene.

Even as the mountain-shattering explosion came and he himself ceased to exist, he knew.

MEDDLER, by Philip K. Dick

Originally published in Future Science Fiction, October 1954.

They entered the great chamber. At the far end, technicians hovered around an immense illuminated board, following a complex pattern of lights that shifted rapidly, flashing through seemingly endless combinations. At long tables machines whirred—computers, human-operated and robot. Wall-charts covered every inch of vertical space. Hasten gazed around him in amazement.

Wood laughed. “Come over here and I’ll really show you something. You recognize this, don’t you?” He pointed to a hulking machine surrounded by silent men and women in white lab robes.

“I recognize it,” Hasten said slowly. “It’s something like our own Dip, but perhaps twenty times larger. What do you haul up? And when do you haul?” He fingered the surface-plate of the Dip, then squatted down, peering into the maw. The maw was locked shut; the Dip was in operation. “You know, if we had any idea this existed, Histo-Research would have—”

“You know now.” Wood bent down beside him. “Listen, Hasten, you’re the first man from outside the Department ever to get into this room. You saw the guards. No one gets in here unauthorized; the guards have orders to kill anyone trying to enter illegally.”

“To hide this? A machine? You’d shoot to—”

They stood, Wood facing him, his jaw hard. “Your Dip digs back into antiquity. Rome. Greece. Dust and old volumes.” Wood touched the big Dip beside them. “This Dip is different. We guard it with our lives, and anyone else’s lives; do you know why?”

Hasten stared at it.

“This Dip is set, not for antiquity, but—for the future.” Wood looked directly into Hasten’s face. “Do you understand? The future.”

“You’re dredging the future? But you can’t! It’s forbidden by law; you know that!” Hasten drew back. “If the Executive Council knew this they’d break this building apart. You know the dangers. Berkowsky himself demonstrated them in his original thesis.”

Hasten paced angrily. “I can’t understand you, using a future-oriented Dip. When you pull material from the future you automatically introduce new factors into the present; the future is altered—you start a never-ending shift. The more you dip the more new factors are brought in. You create unstable conditions for centuries to come. That’s why the law was passed.”

Wood nodded. “I know.”

“And you still keep dipping?” Hasten gestured at the machine and the technicians. “Stop, for God’s sake! Stop before you introduce some lethal element that can’t be erased. Why do you keep—”

Wood sagged suddenly. “All right, Hasten, don’t lecture us. It’s too late; it’s already happened. A lethal factor was introduced in our first experiments. We thought we knew what we were doing…” He looked up. “And that’s why you were brought here. Sit down—you’re going to hear all about it.”

They faced each other across the desk. Wood folded his hands. “I’m going to put it straight on the line. You are considered an expert, the expert at Histo-Research. You know more about using a Time Dip than anyone alive; that’s why you’ve been shown our work, our illegal work.”

“And you’ve already got into trouble?”

“Plenty of trouble, and every attempt to meddle further makes it that much worse. Unless we do something, we’ll be the most culpable organization in history.”

“Please start at the beginning,” Hasten said.

“The Dip was authorized by the Political Science Council; they wanted to know the results of some of their decisions. At first we objected, giving Berkowsky’s theory; but the idea is hypnotic, you know. We gave in, and the Dip was built—secretly, of course.

“We made our first dredge about one year hence. To protect ourselves against Berkowsky’s factor we tried a subterfuge; we actually brought nothing back. This Dip is geared to pick up nothing. No object is scooped; it merely photographs from a high altitude. The film comes back to us and we make enlargements and try to gestalt the conditions.

“Results were all right, at first. No more wars, cities growing, much better looking. Blow-ups of street scenes show many people, well-content, apparently. Pace a little slower.

“Then we went ahead fifty years. Even better: cities on the decrease. People not so dependent on machines. More grass, parks. Same general conditions, peace, happiness, much leisure. Less frenetic waste, hurry.

“We went on, skipping ahead. Of course, with such an indirect viewing method we couldn’t be certain of anything, but it all looked fine. We relayed our information to the Council and they went ahead with their planning. And then it happened.”

“What, exactly?” Hasten said, leaning forward.

“We decided to revisit a period we had already photographed, about a hundred years hence. We sent out the Dip, got it back with a full reel. The men developed it and we watched the run.” Wood paused.

“And?”

“And it wasn’t the same. It was different. Everything was changed. War—war and destruction everywhere.” Wood shuddered. “We were appalled; we sent the Dip back at once to make absolutely certain.”

“And what did you find this time?”

Wood’s fists clenched. “Changed again, and for worse! Ruins, vast ruins. People poking around. Ruin and death everywhere. Slag. The end of war, the last phase.”

“I see,” Hasten said, nodding.

“That’s not the worst! We conveyed the news to the Council. It ceased all activity and went into a two-week conference; it canceled all ordinances and withdrew every plan formed on the basis of our reports. It was a month before the Council got in touch with us again. The members wanted us to try once more, take one more Dip to the same period. We said no, but they insisted. It could be no worse, they argued.

“So we sent the Dip out again. It came back and we ran the film. Hasten, there are things worse than war. You wouldn’t believe what we saw. There was no human life; none at all, not a single human being.”

“Everything was destroyed?”

“No! No destruction, cities big and stately, roads, buildings, lakes, fields. But no human life; the cities empty, functioning mechanically, every machine and wire untouched. But no living people.”

“What was it?”

“We sent the Dip on ahead, at fifty year leaps. Nothing. Nothing each time. Cities, roads, buildings, but no human life. Everyone dead. Plague, radiation, or what, we don’t know. But something killed them. Where did it come from? We don’t know. It wasn’t there at first, not in our original dips.

“Somehow, we introduced it, the lethal factor. We brought it, with our meddling. It wasn’t there when we started; it was done by us, Hasten.” Wood stared at him, his face a white mask. “We brought it and now we’ve got to find what it is and get rid of it.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“We’ve built a Time Car, capable of carrying one human observer into the future. We’re sending a man there to see what it is. Photographs don’t tell us enough; we have to know more! When did it first appear? How? What were the first signs? What is it? Once we know, maybe we can eliminate it, the factor, trace it down and remove it. Someone must go into the future and find out what it was we began. It’s the only way.”

Wood stood up, and Hasten rose, too.

“You’re that person,” Wood said. “You’re going, the most competent person available. The Time Car is outside, in an open square, carefully guarded.” Wood gave a signal. Two soldiers came toward the desk.

“Sir?”

“Come with us,” Wood said. “We’re going outside to the square; make sure no one follows after us.” He turned to Hasten. “Ready?”

Hasten hesitated. “Wait a minute. I’ll have to go over your work, study what’s been done. Examine the Time Car itself. I can’t—”

The two soldiers moved closer, looking to Wood. Wood put his hand on Hasten’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, “we have no time to waste; come along with me.”

* * * *

All around him blackness moved, swirling toward him and then receding. He sat down on the stool before the bank of controls, wiping the perspiration from his face. He was on his way, for better or worse. Briefly, Wood had outlined the operation of the Time Car. A few moments of instruction, the controls set for him, and then the metal door slammed behind him.

Hasten looked around him. It was cold in the sphere; the air was thin and chilly. He watched the moving dials for awhile, but presently the cold began to make him uncomfortable. He went over to the equipment-locker and slid the door back. A jacket, a heavy jacket, and a flash gun. He held the gun for a minute, studying it. And tools, all kinds of tools and equipment. He was just putting the gun away when the dull chugging under him suddenly ceased. For one terrible second he was floating, drifting aimlessly, then the feeling was gone.

Sunlight flowed through the window, spreading out over the floor. He snapped the artificial lights off and went to the window to see. Wood had set the controls for a hundred years hence; bracing himself, he looked out.

A meadow, flowers and grass, rolling off into the distance. Blue sky and wandering clouds. Some animals grazed a long way off, standing together in the shade of a tree. He went to the door and unlocked it, stepping out. Warm sunlight struck him, and he felt better at once. Now he could see the animals were cows.

He stood for a long time at the door, his hands on his hips. Could the plague have been bacterial? Air-carried? If it were a plague. He reached up, feeling the protective helmet resting on his shoulders. Better to keep it on.

He went back and got the gun from the locker. Then he returned to the lip of the sphere, checked the door-lock to be certain it would remain closed during his absence. Only then, Hasten stepped down onto the grass of the meadow. He closed the door and looked around him. Presently he began to walk quickly away from the sphere, toward the top of a long hill that stretched out half a mile away. As he strode along, he examined the click-band on his wrist which would guide him back to the metal sphere, the Time Car, if he could not find the way himself.

He came to the cows, passing by their tree. The cows got up and moved away from him. He noticed something that gave him a sudden chill; their udders were small and wrinkled. Not herd cows.

When he reached the top of the hill he stopped, lifting his glasses from his waist. The earth fell away, mile after mile of it, dry green fields without pattern or design, rolling like waves as far as the eye could see. Nothing else? He turned, sweeping the horizon.

He stiffened, adjusting the sight. Far off to the left, at the very limit of vision, the vague perpendiculars of a city rose up. He lowered the glasses and hitched up his heavy boots. Then he walked down the other side of the hill, taking big steps; he had a long way to go.

* * * *

Hasten had not walked more than half an hour when he saw butterflies.

They rose up suddenly a few yards in front of him, dancing and fluttering in the sunlight. He stopped to rest, watching them. They were all colors, red and blue, with splashes of yellow and green. They were the largest butterflies he had ever seen. Perhaps they had come from some zoo, escaped and bred wild after man left the scene. The butterflies rose higher and higher in the air. They took no notice of him but struck out toward the distant spires of the city; in a moment they were gone.

Hasten started up again. It was hard to imagine the death of man in such circumstances, butterflies and grass and cows in the shade. What a quiet and lovely world was left, without the human race!

Suddenly one last butterfly fluttered up, almost in his face, rising quickly from the grass. He put his arm up automatically, batting at it. The butterfly dashed against his hand. He began to laugh—

Pain made him sick; he fell half to his knees, gasping and retching. He rolled over on his face, hunching himself up, burying his face in the ground. His arm ached, and pain knotted him up; his head swam and he closed his eyes.

When Hasten turned over at last, the butterfly was gone; it had not lingered.

He lay for a time in the grass, then he sat up slowly, getting shakily to his feet. He stripped off his shirt and examined his hand and wrist. The flesh was black, hard and already swelling. He glanced down at it and then at the distant city. The butterflies had gone there…

He made his way back to the Time Car.

* * * *

Hasten reached the sphere a little after the sun had begun to drop into evening darkness. The door slid back to his touch and he stepped inside. He dressed his hand and arm with salve from the medicine kit and then sat down on the stool, deep in thought, staring at his arm. A small sting, accidental, in fact. The butterfly had not even noticed. Suppose the whole pack—

He waited until the sun had completely set and it was pitch black outside the sphere. At night all the bees and butterflies disappeared; or at least, those he knew did. Well, he would have to take a chance. His arm still ached dully, throbbing without respite. The salve had done no good; he felt dizzy, and there was a fever taste in his mouth.

Before he went out he opened the locker and brought all the things out. He examined the flash gun but put it aside. A moment later he found what he wanted. A blowtorch, and a flashlight. He put all the other things back and stood up. Now he was ready—if that were the word for it. As ready as he would ever be.

He stepped out into the darkness, flashing the light ahead of him. He walked quickly. It was a dark and lonely night; only a few stars shone above him, and his was the only earthly light. He passed up the hill and down the other side. A grove of trees loomed up, and then he was on a level plain, feeling his way toward the city by the beam of the flashlight.

When he reached the city he was very tired. He had gone a long way, and his breath was beginning to come hard. Huge ghostly outlines rose up ahead of him, disappearing above, vanishing into darkness. It was not a large city, apparently, but its design was strange to Hasten, more vertical and slim than he was used to.

He went through the gate. Grass was growing from the stone pavement of the streets. He stopped, looking down. Grass and weeds everywhere; and in the corners, by the buildings were bones, little heaps of bones and dust. He walked on, flashing his light against the sides of the slender buildings. His footsteps echoed hollowly. There was no light except his own.

The buildings began to thin out. Soon he found himself entering a great tangled square, overgrown with bushes and vines. At the far end a building larger than the others rose. He walked toward it, across the empty, desolate square, flashing his light from side to side. He walked up a half-buried step and onto a concrete plaza. All at once he stopped. To his right, another building reared up, catching his attention. His heart thudded. Above the doorway his light made out a word cut expertly into the arch:

Bibliotheca

This was what he wanted, the library. He went up the steps toward the dark entrance. Wood boards gave under his feet. He reached the entrance and found himself facing a heavy wood door with metal handles. When he took hold of the handles the door fell toward him, crashing past him, down the steps and into the darkness. The odor of decay and dust choked him.

He went inside. Spider webs brushed against his helmet as he passed along silent halls. He chose a room at random and entered it. Here were more heaps of dust and grey bits of bones. Low tables and shelves ran along the walls. He went to the shelves and took down a handful of books. They powdered and broke in his hands, showering bits of paper and thread onto him. Had only a century passed since his own time?

Hasten sat down at one of the tables and opened one of the books that was in better condition. The words were no language he knew, a Romance language that he knew must be artificial. He turned page after page. At last he took a handful of books at random and moved back toward the door. Suddenly his heart jumped. He went over to the wall, his hands trembling. Newspapers.

He took the brittle, cracking sheets carefully down, holding them to the light. The same language, of course. Bold, black headlines. He managed to roll some of the papers together and add them to his load of books. Then he went through the door, out into the corridor, back the way he had come.

When he stepped out onto the steps cold fresh air struck him, tingling his nose. He looked around at the dim outlines rising up on all sides of the square. Then he walked down and across the square, feeling his way carefully along. He came to the gate of the city, and a moment later he was outside, on the flat plain again, heading back toward the Time Car.

For an endless time he walked, his head bent down, plodding along. Finally fatigue made him stop, swaying back and forth, breathing deeply. He set down his load and looked around him. Far off, at the edge of the horizon, a long streak of grey had appeared, silently coming into existence while he was walking. Dawn. The sun coming up.

A cold wind moved through the air, eddying against him. In the forming grey light the trees and hills were beginning to take shape, a hard, unbending outline. He turned toward the city. Bleak and thin, the shafts of the deserted buildings stuck up. For a moment he watched, fascinated by the first color of day as it struck the shafts and towers. Then the color faded, and a drifting mist moved between him and the city. All at once he bent down and grabbed up his load. He began to walk, hurrying as best he could, chill fear moving through him.

From the city a black speck had leaped up into the sky and was hovering over it.

* * * *

After a time, a long time, Hasten looked back. The speck was still there—but it had grown. And it was no longer black; in the clear light of day the speck was beginning to flash, shining with many colors.

He increased his pace; he went down the side of a hill and up another. For a second he paused to snap on his click-band. It spoke loudly; he was not far from the sphere. He waved his arm and the clicks rose and fell. To the right. Wiping the perspiration from his hands he went on.

A few minutes later he looked down from the top of a ridge and saw a gleaming metal sphere resting silently on the grass, dripping with cold dew from the night. The Time Car; sliding and running, he leaped down the hill toward it.

He was just pushing the door open with his shoulder when the first cloud of butterflies appeared at the top of the hill, moving quietly toward him.

He locked the door and set his armload down, flexing his muscles. His hand ached, burning now with an intense pain. He had no time for that—He hurried to the window and peered out. The butterflies were swarming toward the sphere, darting and dancing above him, flashing with color. They began to settle down onto the metal, even onto the window. Abruptly, his gaze was cut off by gleaming bodies, soft and pulpy, their beating wings mashed together. He listened. He could hear them, a muffled, echoing sound that came from all sides of him. The interior of the sphere dimmed into darkness as the butterflies sealed off the window. He lit the artificial lights.

Time passed. He examined the newspapers, uncertain of what to do. Go back? Or ahead? Better jump ahead fifty years or so. The butterflies were dangerous, but perhaps not the real thing, the lethal factor that he was looking for. He looked at his hand. The skin was black and hard, a dead area that was increasing. A faint shadow of worry went through him; it was getting worse, not better.

The scratching sound on all sides of him began to annoy him, filling him with an uneasy restlessness. He put down the books and paced back and forth. How could insects, even immense insects such as these destroy the human race? Surely human beings could combat them. Dusts, poisons, sprays.

A bit of metal, a little particle drifted down onto his sleeve. He brushed it off. A second particle fell, and then some tiny fragments.

He leaped, his head jerking up.

A circle was forming above his head. Another circle appeared to the right of it, and then a third. All around him circles were forming in the walls and roof of the sphere. He ran to the control board and closed the safety switch. The board hummed into life. He began to set the indicator panel, working rapidly, frantically. Now pieces of metal were dropping down, a rain of metal fragments onto the floor. Corrosive, some kind of substance exuded from them. Acid? Natural secretion of some sort. A large piece of metal fell; he turned.

Into the sphere the butterflies came, fluttering and dancing toward him. The piece that had fallen was a circle of metal, cut cleanly through. He did not have time even to notice it; he snatched up the blowtorch and snapped it on. The flame sucked and gurgled. As the butterflies came toward him he pressed the handle and held the spout up. The air burst alive with burning particles that rained down all over him, and a furious odor reeked through the sphere.

He closed the last switches. The indicator lights flickered, the floor chugged under him. He threw the main lever. More butterflies were pushing in, crowding each other eagerly, struggling to get through. A second circle of metal crashed to the floor suddenly, emitting a new horde. Hasten cringed, backing away, the blowtorch up, spouting flame. The butterflies came on, more and more of them.

Then sudden silence settled over everything, a quiet so abrupt that he blinked. The endless, insistent scratching had ceased. He was alone, except for a cloud of ashes and particles over the floor and walls, the remains of the butterflies that had got into the sphere. Hasten sat down on the stool, trembling. He was safe, on his way back to his own time; and there was no doubt, no possible doubt that he had found the lethal factor. It was there, in the heap of ashes on the floor, in the circles neatly cut in the hull of the car. Corrosive secretion? He smiled grimly.

His last vision of them, of the swelling horde had told him what he wanted to know. Clutched carefully against the first butterflies through the circles were tools, tiny cutting tools. They had cut their way in, bored through; they had come carrying their own equipment.

He sat down, waiting for the Time Car to complete its journey.

* * * *

Department guards caught hold of him, helping him from the Car. He stepped down unsteadily, leaning against them. “Thanks,” he murmured.

Wood hurried up. “Hasten, you’re all right?”

He nodded. “Yes. Except my hand.”

“Let’s get inside at once.” They went through the door, into the great chamber. “Sit down.” Wood waved his hand impatiently, and a soldier hurried a chair over. “Get him some hot coffee.”

Coffee was brought. Hasten sat sipping. At last he pushed the cup away and leaned back.

“Can you tell us now?” Wood asked.

“Yes.”

“Fine.” Wood sat down across from him. A tape recorder whirred into life and a camera began to photograph Hasten’s face as he talked. “Go on. What did you find?”

* * * *

When he had finished the room was silent. None of the guards or technicians spoke.

Wood stood up, trembling. “God. So it’s a form of toxic life that got them. I thought it was something like that. But butterflies? And intelligent. Planning attacks. Probably rapid breeding, quick adaptation.”

“Maybe the books and newspapers will help us.”

“But where did they come from? Mutation of some existing form? Or from some other planet. Maybe space travel brought them in. We’ve got to find out.”

“They attacked only human beings,” Hasten said. “They left the cows. Just people.”

“Maybe we can stop them.” Wood snapped on the vidphone. “I’ll have the Council convene an emergency session. We’ll give them your description and recommendations. We’ll start a program, organize units all over the planet. Now that we know what it is, we have a chance. Thanks to you, Hasten, maybe we can stop them in time!”

The operator appeared and Wood gave the Council’s code letter. Hasten watched dully. At last he got to his feet and wandered around the room. His arm throbbed unmercifully. Presently he went back outside, through the doorway into the open square. Some soldiers were examining the Time Car curiously. Hasten watched them without feeling, his mind blank.

“What is this, sir?” one asked.

“That?” Hasten roused himself, going slowly over. “That’s a Time Car.”

“No, I mean this.” The soldier pointed to something on the hull. “This, sir; it wasn’t on there when the Car went out.”

Hasten’s heart stopped beating. He pushed past them, staring up. At first he saw nothing on the metal hull, only the corroded metal surface. Then chill fright rushed through him.

Something small and brown and furry was there, on the surface. He reached out, touching it. A sack, a stiff little brown sack. It was dry, dry and empty. There was nothing in it; it was open at one end. He stared up. All across the hull of the Car were little brown sacks, some still full, but most of them already empty.

Cocoons.

THE MAN WHO LIKED LIONS, by John Bernard Daley

Originally published in Infinity Science Fiction, October 1956.

Mr. Kemper leaned on the rail, watching the caged lions asleep in the August sun. At his side a woman lifted a whimpering little girl to her shoulder and said, “Stop that! Look at the lions!” Then she jiggled the girl up and down. The lion opened yellow eyes, lifted his head from between his paws and yawned. Immediately the girl put her fingers over her face and began to cry. “Shut up!” said the woman. “You shut up right now or I’ll tell that big lion to eat you up!” Looking through her fingers, the girl said, “Lions don’t eat little girls.” The woman shook her. “Of course they do! I said they did, didn’t I?”

“Lions seldom eat people,” said Mr. Kemper. With all of her two hundred pounds the woman turned to face him.

“Well!” she said.

The word hung like an icicle in the warm air, but Mr. Kemper waved it aside. “Only old lions resort to human flesh. Except for the famous incident of the Tsavo man-eaters, of course.”

The woman pulled her arm tighter around the girl, elbow up, as if to ward him off. “Come on, Shirl,” she said. “Let’s go look at the taggers.” And with a warning look over her shoulder she lunged away from the rail. A big man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth took her place.

As her wide back swayed down the walk, Mr. Kemper wondered if she had a special intuition about him, like dogs, whose noses warned them that he was not quite the kind of man they were accustomed to. Women, particularly those with children, seemed to feel that way. He watched her leave, having decided that she was unsuited for what he had in mind.

Two things happened simultaneously, interrupting his thoughts. The big man beside him tapped him on the shoulder and asked him for a match; at the same time Kemper saw, just beyond the retreating woman, a man in a tweed jacket and gray slacks, watching him. For a second they stared at each other and Kemper felt a mind-probe dart swiftly against his shield. He tightened the shield and waited. The man was heavily tanned, like Kemper, with unusually wide eyes and a dolichocephalic head. He had remarkable cheekbones; they appeared to slant forward toward the middle of his face, which was very narrow and long in the jaw. He looked a lot like Mr. Kemper, the way one Caucasian looks like another to an Eskimo. His glance swerved from Kemper to the lion cage; then he turned his back, a little too casually. Breath hissed softly from between Mr. Kemper’s teeth.

The big man said, “Hey, buddy, I asked do you have a match?”

“What? No, I don’t smoke.” His thoughts racing, he faced the lion cage. The tanned man had turned away, obviously not wanting to contact him, but why? He knew who Kemper was; there was no doubt of that. Frowning slightly, Mr. Kemper looked at the chewed hunks of horsemeat and bone on the cage floor, and the vibrating flies. The only logical answer was that the man was waiting for reinforcements. Even now he was probably contacting the Three Councils. Still, that gave Kemper a reasonable chance; it took a while for even the most powerful minds to move along the pathways of time.

Beside him the big man was talking again. “You feel okay, pal? You looked kind of far away there all of a sudden. Maybe you oughta go over in the shade.”

“Not at all. I was only thinking of something.”

“Yeah?” The man took the cigarette from his mouth and put it in his shirt pocket. “Say, I heard you telling that broad there lions don’t eat people. You sure about that?”

“Quite sure. Look at them. Do you think they need to depend on anything as slow as Homo Sapiens for food?” With another part of his brain he wondered how many men would be sent to take him back. There was one point in his favor, however. He had nothing to lose.

“I don’t know, pal. All I ever see them do is sleep. Always laying on their fat backs, like now.”

“Well, that’s not unusual. Lions sleep in the daytime and hunt at night.”

“Yeah? What the hell good is that? The zoo closes at 5:30, don’t it?”

Kemper looked at him dispassionately. He thought: “You fool, what would you say if you knew that you were talking to a man who hunted your ape ancestors through the forests of a million years ago? Could your pigmy brain accept that?”

The man jabbed him on the shoulder again. “Look at that big one with the black streaks in his hair. Ain’t he something? Why don’t he jump around in there like the chimps do?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know it’s expected of him,” Kemper answered, hoping that the arrival of the man in the tweed jacket would not affect his sport of the moment.

“You know, I’d like to see a couple of those babies mixing it up. Like the lion against the tiger, maybe. Who do you think would win a hassle like that, anyway?”

“The lion,” Mr. Kemper said. He decided that the game would go on; an idea was beginning to scratch at the corners of his mind. Looking around with what he hoped was a conspiratorial air, he jabbed his elbow into the big man’s stomach. “Listen, you’d like to see some action, would you? Suppose you be here in say—two hours. At three o’clock.”

“Yeah? What kind of action? You ain’t trying to kid me, are you, buddy?”

Shrugging, Mr. Kemper looked at the flies swarming in the cage. “It’s just a tip. Take it or leave it, buddy.”

He turned, brushed by the scowling man, and left the rail. Although it was getting hotter he walked down the cement in the sun, avoiding the shade of the tall hedges opposite the row of cages. He went toward the stairway that lifted from the lion court to the terrace where the central zoo building stood. Behind the building was the main enclosure; the zoo itself was terraced along two hillsides, with more hills in the distance. It was not a large zoo, nor was it a good place to hide. But Mr. Kemper did not intend to hide.

In the cages he passed were other cats: cheetahs, leopards, puma and tigers, lying with heaving flanks, or lolling red-tongued on the stone floors. They hadn’t changed too much, he decided, except in size. Even the streak-maned lion was puny in comparison with the lions that Kemper had known. He walked up to the drinking fountain by the stairway, the sun in his face. He was almost tempted to stare contemptuously up at it. Bending over the fountain, he caught the dusty smell of the cats among popcorn, rootbeer and ice cream smells and the sweat stink of people. He straightened, wiping his lips, and remembered the somber jungles of the Pliocene, black-green in the sun that was a fist against your head; the plains of javelin-tall, yellow grass swinging to the horizon; and in the hills the lions with hides like hammered brass, the deadly, roaring lions. He remembered too, with the smell of those lions thick as dust in his mouth, the cities of his people, the proud people who had discovered the secrets of time through the science of their minds, a science unknown to the world he was in now. He looked up slowly and saw the man in the tweed jacket standing at the top of the stairway.

When their eyes met, Kemper probed with an arrow-swift thought but the other had his mind-shield up. The man turned and moved behind a group of women. The man was gone when Kemper got to the top of the steps. “So that’s the way you want it,” he said, looking around. Two sidewalks led from the stair top; one went up the hill to the aviary, the other around the south wing of the building. He took the one that rounded the wing. “I doubt,” he said, “if we’ll play peek-a-boo all afternoon, however.” An old lady twitching along the walk gave him a nasty look as he passed.

He went by the zebra corral where a small boy was picking up stones and turned into the side entrance of the wing. He went down the dim corridor, turned left at the men’s room, then right and left again, and came finally to a small yard partially hidden from the main enclosure by an extension of the wing. In the yard was only one exhibit, a beaver pool surrounded by a waist-high stone wall. Two teen-aged boys sprawled on the wall; otherwise the place was deserted. Mr. Kemper studied the boys. Here was game to his liking. He went over and sat down on a bench in the sun.

The boys, twins, in Levi’s, saddle-shoes, T-shirts and long hair, leaned over the pool. There was something odd about the actions of the blond one who tilted dangerously near the water. He moved, spasmodically, and Mr. Kemper saw the flicker of sunlight on the long stick held like a spear in his hand and heard a splash. Cursing, the boy pushed himself upright and dropped from the wall, shaking water from the stick. “You missed,” said the other one.

“I’ll show that flat-tailed rat,” said the blond boy. From a back pocket he took a clasp-knife and snapped it open, and from a side pocket a length of twine. With swift, vicious twists he started to tie the knife-handle to the end of the stick. He made two knots and said, “Man, look at that. That’ll hold it, man.”

“What about the cat on the bench over there? What if he sees us?”

“Him? So what if he does? We can handle him. Anyway, he’s got his eyes shut, ain’t he?”

The sun tingled on the tops of Mr. Kemper’s ears as he listened, his eyes half-shut.

“Okay, give me lots of room on the wall,” the blond boy said. There was a rasping of cloth on stone. Then Mr. Kemper closed his eyes and made a picture in the darkness of his mind, a small, bright picture that he blotted out immediately after it was formed. By the pool, metal clattered on stone.

The blond boy yelled, “Hey, what’d you shove me for? Look what you did!”

“I never touched you, you jerk!”

“The hell you didn’t. Look at that damn knife!”

Opening his eyes, Mr. Kemper looked at the pieces of knife blade scattered at the boy’s feet and, a little to one side, the broken stick. He smiled and settled back on the bench, listening to the argument. The boys shouted and waved their arms, but that was all. As for their invective, he felt it lacked originality; he tired of it quickly. He got up from the bench and walked toward them. The argument stopped.

They looked at him with cold, arrogant eyes. “Hello,” he said.

They looked away. “You hear something, man?” said the blond boy.

“Not a thing, Jack, not a thing,” the other answered.

The smile on Mr. Kemper’s face was his best, his friendliest; it had taken him hours of practice in front of mirrors. “Apes, your fathers were not arrogant when they died screaming on our spears. They were not bold when our hunting cats ripped their bellies—”

Aloud he said, “You know, I’m a stranger around here and I thought you might be able to help me. Just what is it that’s going on at the lion cage at three o’clock today?”

“We ain’t heard nothing about no lion’s cage, dad. We got our own troubles.”

“Yeah, our own troubles. Get lost, dad.”

“It sounded very interesting, something about a big hassle in the cages.”

The boys lifted their eyebrows and looked sidelong at each other. The blond one said, “I told you to get lost, dad. Take five. You know, depart away from here.”

Mr. Kemper said, “Well, thanks anyway,” and was still smiling as he left them.

It was hotter when he reached the main enclosure, but still cool by his standards. At a refreshment stand he ordered a hot dog with mustard. As he waited, leaning against the counter, he saw the man in the tweed jacket among a group of people walking toward the elephant yard. He paid for the hot dog, picked it up, and walked along the path, keeping the jacket in sight.

The man in tweed went by the elephants, past the giraffes and the zebras, then around the south wing of the building. Up the walk toward the aviary he went, with Kemper not too far behind. At the top of the hill the man stopped in front of the aviary. It was a wide enclosure fenced by bars thirty feet high. In the larger section were the myriad ducks, cranes, gulls and other harmless birds; walled off from these were eagles, vultures, and condors squatting on carved balconies. From the hilltop there was a fine view of the zoo grounds below. The man in the tweed jacket turned, apparently to look down the hill, but instead looked squarely at Mr. Kemper standing a few feet away.

Neither of them said anything. The man in tweed seemed embarrassed. Mr. Kemper took a bite of the hot dog and chewed reflectively. After a while he said, “I suppose I ought to recognize you, but I don’t. Council of Science, no doubt.”

The man answered stiffly: “Ulbasar, of the First Science Council. Lord Kjem, you are under arrest.”

“You’d better use words; it’s less liable to make anyone suspicious. You might have dressed a little more intelligently, too.”

Ulbasar ran his hand over his jacket lapels. “But it’s cold. How do you stand it in that light shirt?”

“Very simple; I’m wearing long underwear.”

“Well, you’ve obviously been here much longer than I have.”

“Yes,” said Kemper. “I’ve been here quite a while.”

They didn’t speak again for several minutes. In front of them some girls pressed against the mesh screen that reinforced the bars, eyeing a pompous small duck. “Let’s go,” said one of the girls. “These birds are too disgusting. I mean, they’re so ugly!”

“She thinks the birds are ugly,” said Mr. Kemper. Laughing, he turned to Ulbasar. “Well, what do you think of the scavenging little ape of our marshland now?”

Ulbasar shook his head. “Incredible. Thoroughly incredible.”

Mr. Kemper said, “Look at them. They laugh at the birds, they laugh at the monkeys; I have even seen some of them laughing at the lions.” He scanned the people at the bars, the sweaty men with crooked noses, sagging bellies, bald heads and hairy arms. There were women in shorts, gray women whose legs pillared up to fearsome, rolling buttocks; girls with smeared mouths and rough-shaven legs and sandals strapped across their fat, wiggling toes. “The females are unbelievable,” Kemper said, “but you should see the children.”

He finished his hot dog and wiped his hands on his handkerchief. “Well, Ulbasar, where are the others?”

“Others? There are no others. I came alone.”

Kemper, his eyes on the people at the cage, slowly folded his handkerchief. Without warning he flung the full force of his mind-probe at the man beside him. Ulbasar staggered and lurched to his left, throwing out a desperate block that was contemptuously brushed aside. Kemper reached out, gripped his arm, then eased the power of the probe. “Don’t lie to me,” he said softly. “It will take more than one of you to force me to go back; you know that. Now, where are the others?”

“Only one other,” said Ulbasar, shaking his head. “Lord Gteris. He’s on his way. None of the rest were close enough to contact.”

“That’s better. So they sent Gteris, eh? It’s been a long time since Gteris and I hunted together, a very long time.” He looked up as the condor on the highest perch spread its wings and cocked its head toward the wire mesh roof of the cage.

Words burbled from Ulbasar, who still looked shaken. “The Nobles demanded that Lord Gteris come. The Science Council insisted that only our men handle it, and they’re considerably agitated. There’s been open conflict between Nobles and Scientists at the Sessions, and the tribunal is worried. They want you returned, and they want you returned quickly.”

“Politics, always politics,” said Kemper, letting loose his grip on Ulbasar’s arm.

“The Scientists are putting a lot of pressure on the tribunal. They feel there’s danger to us each moment you spend here in the future. They’re worried about the time-pattern.”

“That’s ridiculous. How can a man from the past affect the future? Besides, it isn’t our future; it belongs to the ape-people.”

“I know, but that makes no difference.”

“I’ve been to their libraries. There are no records of us, unless you count some foolish legends of continents sinking into the sea.” He looked at a man a few feet away who was throwing popcorn at a gull. A piece of popcorn bounced off the gull’s head, and the man laughed. People standing near by laughed too, and the man pitched more popcorn. Sighing, Kemper looked at his wrist watch. “When is he coming?”

“I don’t know, precisely, and that’s the truth.”

Kemper thought about it. It would take a while. After Gteris arrived there would be important details to occupy him, such as assimilating the manners and mores of this era and getting proper clothing. He said, “When he comes you’ll have no trouble finding me. I won’t leave the grounds; I give my word.”

“The word of a renegade and a fugitive?” Ulbasar was himself again.

“The word of a Noble,” said Kemper, turning away from him coldly.

“One thing more, Lord Kjem,” Ulbasar said. “The time rift. We have orders to go back with you along the rift you used, making certain that you seal it behind us. Is it close by?”

“That I will tell you when I have to,” said Kemper, turning completely around this time and walking away.

Ulbasar would keep close watch on him, he knew, until Gteris came. That they intended to make him close his time rift made sense; the rift was dangerous to the over-all pattern. When he had left hastily he had forced his way through time with his mind-matrix, knowing that pursuit would have been swift if he had taken one of the normal time paths. The rift he had made was obvious, but would respond to no one but him. Others could accompany him through it, however, if he led the way. Gteris and Ulbasar could go with him and, controlling his mind, make him close the rift behind him.

So he walked briskly, knowing he had much to do in an uncertain amount of time. The sun was higher, pale in the glazed sky. Disheveled, harassed-looking people passed him, sweat stains dark on their clothes, and with them were fretful children. Mr. Kemper walked, and the people went by him, on their way to laugh at the monkeys, throw stones at the bears, and call “Kitty, kitty, kitty” to the leopards.

At a stand opposite the polar bears, near the north wing of the central building, he stopped to get a cup of coffee, but there was none for sale, so instead he bought a paper cup full of a green drink. He sipped it, watching a big white bear loafing in the pool. A little to one side of him a young man was arguing with a boy who wanted cotton candy. From below them, and to their right, came a low rumbling. “What’s that, Daddy?” said the boy. “It’s only the lions roaring,” his father answered.

“They’re not roaring, actually,” said Mr. Kemper. “They’re grunting, and clearing their throats.”

The boy looked at Mr. Kemper with interest, but his father frowned. “It sounds like roaring to me,” he said.

Mr. Kemper smiled at the boy. “Oh, no. If the lions were roaring you could hear nothing else. It’s a sound you never forget, a sound that rips the wind and shakes the trees with thunder.”

“I could forget it, Mac,” said the counterman, leaning on his elbows and winking at the boy’s father.

“I want to hear the lions roar,” the boy said.

“For Pete’s sake, what do you want? Make up your mind; do you want lions or cotton candy?” The boy’s father looked exasperated.

“If you go to the lion cage at three o’clock today you’ll hear them roar,” Mr. Kemper said.

Shortly after that the young man dragged away his little boy, who was still insisting he wanted to hear the lions roar. Eventually, everyone who talked with Mr. Kemper went away rather suddenly. Mr. Kemper, unabashed, drank from his paper cup and thought about the ravages of time.

A woman and a man came around the corner of the building that faced the polar bears. The woman was red-faced, her voice a thin rasping. “All you want to do is watch those damn chips. You’d watch those chips all day if I didn’t drag you away from there. Chips, chips, I’m sick of chips.”

“Chimps,” said Mr. Kemper as they went by. “Chimps, not chips. Chimps, lady, with an ‘m’ in it.”

The counterman, moving toward him, wiped the counter with a soggy rag and said, “Listen, Mac, what’s all this with the lions?”

Mr. Kemper looked at him. “Oh, do you like lions?”

“Well, it’s like this,” the counterman said. But he had no chance to finish. There was an animal shriek of pain from the other side of the building. The polar bears lifted their heads. Putting his unfinished drink on the counter, Mr. Kemper went toward the sound.

In the high cage that housed the chimpanzees, at the corner of the wing, a chimp swung violently on a trapeze, scolding at another on the cage floor. Kemper saw that the one on the trapeze was a female, the other a bigger, older male. The male, his face grotesque with anger, climbed the bars and got as close as he could to the trapeze. He hung there, grabbing at the female as she swung past just out of reach. There were only a few people near the cage, but most of them were smiling. One of them, a gangling, tall man, ran about pointing a camera first at the female, then the male. A lean woman, possibly his wife, stood close to him. She put her hand on his arm. When Kemper saw her eyes he moved behind the others and went toward her and the man with the camera, taking a position a little to their right.

“Do it again, Al,” the lank woman said. “Make them mad again.” Al was sweating. He laughed, looked at the people around him, then pushed black hair from his forehead and handed her the camera. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You get the shots now and don’t goof it.” He moved disjointedly, like a puppet, as close to the cage as he could, directly beneath the periphery of the trapeze’s swinging arc.

He started to jiggle, then jumped up and down, making faces at the female. “Chee, chee!” he called. He danced, capering loosely, flapping long arms against his thighs. “Haaah, haaah, haaah,” he yelled. “Haaah! Aargh!”

Angered, the female chattered at him. When the trapeze swung to the top of its arc she leaped and caught the cage bars, then dropped down them until she was only a few feet above the capering man. She screeched at him, pounding one hand against a bar, and the spectators laughed. On the opposite side of the cage the male chimp dropped to the floor and scuttled toward her. Stopping beneath her, he lifted his arms and growled low in his throat. She turned, snarling, and began to climb bars. With a last wild screech at the shouting, dancing man outside the cage she jumped, just as the male’s fingers brushed her foot. Far over his head she went, then thumped to the floor. He dropped, and ran after her. She was climbing toward the trapeze again when he caught her. He sidled in, cuffing at her, then they grappled. A scream split the air as his teeth sank into her shoulder. Added now to the smells of popcorn, sweat and cotton candy was the smell of blood.

There was quiet in the cage and out of it as the female backed away from the hunched male. Unmolested, she climbed the bars slowly and swung to the trapeze, where she sat with one hand held to her bleeding shoulder. On the floor of the cage the male lifted both arms to her.

The spectators breathed again. “Did you get it?” said Al. “Did you? What a shot! Terrific, but terrific!”

“I got it, Al, I got it!” his wife said, eyes shining.

Mr. Kemper grinned at Al and shook his head admiringly. “Say, that was quite a performance.” Still breathing hard, Al shoved his hair out of his eyes and returned the grin.

“Oh, Al’s great,” his wife said. “You ought to see him sometime at a party.”

Mr. Kemper said, “He certainly does have talent.”

“Ah, it’s nothing,” Al said. “Nothing to it, fella. You sure you got those shots, Baby?”

Moving closer, Mr. Kemper lowered his voice. “Listen, would you like to get some really terrific shots? Ones you’d remember all your life?”

Al looked at him. “Yeah. Shots of what?”

“Be at the lion cage at three o’clock. You’ll never have a chance like this again, believe me.”

“Sure, sure, but shots of what, friend?”

So Mr. Kemper bent his head and whispered to him, and as he did he saw the gleam start deep in Al’s eyes and swell to the pale surfaces. But Al’s eyes didn’t gleam the way his wife’s did. And after a while Mr. Kemper left them, and the cage that was silent except for the slow creaking of the trapeze.

After looking at his watch, Mr. Kemper walked faster. The sun dropped in the sticky sky and there was only a faint wind. And for the next hour or so Mr. Kemper was here, there and everywhere. If there was a bunch of little boys shouting at the rhinoceros, then Mr. Kemper was there, smiling and nodding. When a party of college students stood making dirty jokes about the baboons, there too was Mr. Kemper, eventually saying something that made everyone stare at him.

He was ubiquitous. He was with the people who craned their necks at the giraffes, and the ones who laughed at the sleek sea lions darting in their narrow troughs. He was with a family watching the anacondas drooping in green cubicles; he was at the bison corral; he saw the crocodile, the yak and the blesbok. And always, wherever he was, he had a few words to say about the lions. And time passed.

It was exactly three o’clock when he stood again at the top of the stairway above the lion court. A lot of people were milling and shoving in front of the cages, a noisy crowd that made the lions nervous. They were awake now, pacing their cells, and the leopards were awake, and the jaguars. In the center cage the streak-maned lion put his head to the floor and coughed. Behind him the lioness waited, tense. The lion curved a paw around one of the bars and some of the people clapped their hands. Others whistled; several looked at their watches. Kemper, who was starting to smile again, watched the crowd. There was Al, his camera, and his wife, close to the center cage. The two teen-aged boys were near them. The little boy and his father were there, and many others that Mr. Kemper was glad to see. Hands clasped behind him, he stood looking down on them. Suddenly he felt powerful bonds clamp onto his mind.

Turning slowly around, he saw Ulbasar walking down the hill toward him, a tall man at his side. They stopped in front of him, their faces dark in the sun. “Here he is,” said Ulbasar. The tall man at his left made the greeting sign of one Noble to another. “Lord Kjem,” he said. Returning the sign, Mr. Kemper said, “Lord Gteris.”

Gteris said, “I hate to do this; you know that. We were friends once. I hope you won’t try to resist.”

“I told Ulbasar I wouldn’t. Together you’re considerably stronger than I am. I’d be a fool to try anything.”

“That’s smart of you,” said Gteris. “Now let’s get to business. Ulbasar says you wouldn’t tell him the location of your time rift. Is this true?”

“Certainly. Does a Noble answer to a Scientist? But of course I’ll tell you, Gteris. The time rift is down there, behind the hedge opposite the lion cage.”

All signs of friendliness left Gteris’s face. He spun and gave orders. “Ulbasar, you heard him. Go down there and see if he’s telling the truth. I’ll stand guard over him. And keep the mind-block tight.”

Ulbasar nodded and went down the steps. Mr. Kemper tested the vise that pressed against his mind; it held much too well. Gteris was looking at him reproachfully. “Really, Kjem, yours is conduct unbecoming a Noble. If you had to murder somebody, why did it have to be a Scientist? And then all this forcing your own rift into the time-pattern. The Nobles are unhappy with you, Kjem.”

“You know, I don’t regret any of it,” said Mr. Kemper, watching Ulbasar moving close to the crowd by the cages. “Tell me, how’s the hunting back home?”

“Not too bad; I got some fine hawks a while back. I still wish I could handle cats the way you do, instead of—What’s wrong with that crowd in front of the cage down there?”

Mr. Kemper said, “It’s past three o’clock.”

Below them a big man pushed through the crowd toward Ulbasar, shouting, “There’s the guy told me to be here! There’s the faker!” Ulbasar hesitated, looked around, and stopped. The big man caught Ulbasar’s shoulder, and jabbed a finger against his chest. The crowd moved toward them.

Gteris said, “He’s in trouble.”

“He’s as good as dead right now,” Kemper said.

Gteris stared down at the crowd, then at Kemper. Swiftly he shot a warning thought to Ulbasar, who caught it. As he did the pressure eased slightly from Kemper’s mind. It was enough. Kemper lashed out against Gteris’s block. They stood there, minds twisting in combat. Then as Ulbasar was hemmed in by the crowd his support weakened, and Gteris fought alone. Slowly but inexorably he was forced back and out, and Kemper’s mind was free. Gteris’s face was haggard. “Good gods, Kjem!” he said. “Look at Ulbasar!”

“You can still help him. I’m not holding you.”

Gteris looked wildly at him, then ran, bounding down the steps two at a time. He ran toward the crowd and began shouting at Ulbasar. Kemper saw the concentration on his face and knew he was trying to control the crowd. It was then that Mr. Kemper closed his eyes.

First he shut out the world around him: The dim sun on his ears, the smells of dusty summer and popcorn, the sounds of the small wind and the people. In the blackness of his mind he saw the lion court; each bar of the cage and the yellow lions inside it; the crowd and the two dark men. Then he made a picture of the bars loosening at the top of the cage and the bottom, and the entire section of the cage front sliding ponderously sideways.

There was no sound anywhere. Then below him rang a gonging of steel on cement and after that the screaming, and over all of it, dwarfing the yells and the echoing clangs, came a roar that ripped the wind and shook the trees with thunder.

His eyes still closed, Kemper loosened the fronts of all the cages, one by one. After that he put all his mind to directing the lions. To Ulbasar he gave a quick death. Gteris he singled out for a special favor; he sent the streak-maned lion at him. As the lion crouched, Gteris stood unmoving, covering his face with his hands. “Stand and fight!” Kemper shouted. “At least die like a Noble!” But Gteris did not move, and the lion sprang. Kemper laughed, the old excitement of the hunt surging in him as he sent the cats leaping and clawing. He made sure that a special few of the ape-people died very slowly. In the distance a siren wailed.

Kemper did not hear the rushing sounds behind and above him. When he did, he called the lions to him, desperately. He looked up at the condors, hurtling like javelins, and behind them the eagles. And he knew why Gteris, the hunter of condors and eagles, had not tried to hold off the lions. Then the condors smashed down.

The streak-maned lion came to him, but it was too late. Mr. Kemper lay dying in the cold sun with the smell of lions like dust in his throat.

FLAME FOR THE FUTURE, by William P. McGivern

“Flame for the Future” originally appeared in Amazing Stories, October 1941.

The tense whispering in the great hall faded suddenly. The huge double doors of the Council Room swung back and, as one man, the entire assemblage of high ranking soldiers come to their feet, hands outstretched in the traditional salute carried over from the days of the First Leader.

The Leader strode through their ranks. He was a tall man with heavy broad shoulders and thin, expressionless face. He turned and faced the room. Blue eyes, cold and unmoving, stared impassively over the expectant audience. Light hair, close cropped and straight, pressed tight about his skull like a bronze helmet.

“Soldiers,” he began without preliminaries. “I have called you here from all ends of the land and sea to announce that victory, complete and final, will soon be ours. For fifty years the enemy has fought stubbornly and desperately against our strength and might. But now, in the year 1990, they are doomed to the inevitable destruction which is the end of all enemies of our State. For thirty years we have been forced to fight delaying actions in some sectors of the World because we did not have sufficient man power to wage a decisive attack. Now that difficulty has been solved.

“In a very short time we will hurl onto the field of combat thousands, millions of troops vastly superior to any which the world has known. Troops so skilled and ruthless and perfect that even our own excellent divisions could not expect to stand against them.”

There was an incredulous gasp from the large room and the Leader smiled without humor.

“However these new and powerful additions to our forces will be fighting the stubborn enemy and not us, which is fortunate.”

A gray-haired Field Marshal rose to his feet and raised his arm in salute.

“My Leader,” he said, “how can this be? There are not such troops as you describe in the entire World. With the decrease of the population we will soon be without troops of any sort to wage our just and noble struggle. The enemy is in the same predicament. We are killing each other off faster than we can breed new soldiers.”

The Leader leaned forward slightly.

“I have called this meeting to explain exactly how we will solve that very problem. We have dedicated ourselves to the task of creating a super race. There can be no doubt that we will succeed. Think! Centuries from now the glorious civilization which we intend to create will dominate the earth. Our descendants will rule the earth, rule its wealth, rule its people. That is why we are fighting today. For the creation of the super race which will one day be all-powerful, all-conquering, all-mighty.

“Today I am going to explain to you the greatest scientific triumph of my regime. It is something which I have dreamed and planned for years. But first I want to say this to you. You know that in our State we do not allow slackers and shirkers to live. We put them to death the instant we discover them, for we know that all must fight and give their utmost in the crusade we are waging. Now if we are doing that, giving our last drop of blood and sweat to crush our enemies, why should those who will enjoy the benefits of our heroic labors be permitted to shirk their duty?”

For an instant there was dead silence in the room. A silence broken only by the sharp intake of breath as the assembled Chieftains caught the import of the Leader’s words.

“They have as much at stake,” the Leader continued, “more, in fact, than we ourselves have. Those who will follow us, the super race which will result from the completion of our struggle, they must be made to do their share in the winnings of that struggle. Therefore I have called you here to tell you of my plan.”

He made a slight gesture to an orderly standing next to a square object beside him. The orderly stepped forward and with one gesture whipped the enveloping cover from the object, revealing it as a glistening metal cage, shimmering and strangely unreal.

The gathering of Chieftains moved forward for a better view of this strange creation. It was made roughly like a small cage with two metal seats in the interior and a mass of gadgets and equipment on a dial board before them.

The leader drew himself to his full height and stared truimphantly over the bewildered throng.

“The object before you is a Time Machine,” he said with repressed pride. “The result of our Ingenuity and skill. With it we will draw new support to our Cause. Two of my most trusted Lieutenants are to travel into the future to enlist the aid of the races which will be created by us. When they are told of our need of them, they will swoop back through the boundless reaches of Time to throw their great skill and power into the fray. With our glorious descendants fighting by the millions alongside us we will not, cannot, fail.”

There was a buzzing murmur of excited voices sweeping through the room and then shouts of praise and joy pouring from their throats. The Leader stood before them, smiling quietly at the fanatical demonstration. At last he raised his hand for silence.

“The Time Machine leaves now!” he announced. At a gesture from him two stalwart, uniformed young men stepped to the machine. “Lieutenant Schmidt and Lieutenant Wolf,” he cried fervently, “are doing their Race and their Country and their Cause great and glorious service. They have invented this machine and are prepared to take it into the glorious future which we are creating now. The mighty race which will spring from us will welcome them and honor them and return with them by the thousands to fight with their ancestors.”

The two young men saluted, stepped into the machine. A thunderous roar of commendation broke from the audience, crashing between the walls with reverberating echoes.

Once more the Leader raised his hand.

“We salute you Lieutenant Schmidt and Lieutenant Wolf,” he said impressively. “Our hearts and our hopes travel with you, wishing for you and for us and for the glorious races we will bring to Earth, success; mighty, magnificent success!”

He dropped his hand and one of the young men in the Time Machine moved a lever slowly to the right. The other, moved an indicator along a row of buttons stamped with units of time. Then he pressed a button. To the accompaniment of roar upon roar of triumph and hysterical encouragement the Time Machine shimmered and twisted slowly. As it turned it gradually disappeared. Bedlam broke loose; even the normally august figure of the Leader pranced in an uncontrolled ecstasy of glee.

* * * *

“We have arrived, Lieutenant Schmidt,” Lieutenant Wolf, the smaller of the two men, sat quietly. “We are five hundred years into the future. It is our third stop. We tried two centuries, three centuries, four centuries and now five.”

“And every time is the same,” Lieutenant Schmidt answered dully. “Let us climb out. It can’t be any worse.”

The two men climbed out of the machine and stared despairingly about at the black and blasted surface of the earth.

“The only people we have seen,” Schmidt said bitterly, “were those starving barbarians we saw two hundred years ago. Is it the end of the world? Is this what we are fighting for? To produce this?”

“Watch your tongue,” Wolf snapped. “That is treason.”

“Treason,” Schmidt muttered disgustedly.

Their Time Machine had landed in a slight depression, surrounded on three sides by rough, craggy boulders and blasted rocks. Wolf, staring at one of the slight hills, suddenly grabbed his companion by the arm.

“I saw something move up there,” he whispered tensely. He loosened his gun in its holster. “Let us investigate.”

Schmidt shrugged and followed him, climbing over the rough brambles and crags that littered the side of the slope.

* * * *

Kogar and Merena crouched behind the big black boulder and silently watched the two strange creatures moving across the scarred terrain.

Sharply Kogar drew in his breath and turned his shaggy head to his mate. He licked his lips.

“These creatures live, my Merena.”

His small eyes beneath his thick brows went back to their burning contemplation of the figures approaching.

Merena was not quite so coarse featured as Kogar. She had long, tangled black hair that fell almost to her waist. Her nose was not so flat as Kogar’s, her lips not so thick. But her black eyes gleamed with the same furious intensity, the same fierce gnawing hunger, as her mate’s.

For three star-skies it had been this way. No food. No raw flesh to fill the belly. There had been a small winged sky creature, that last time. Kogar had brought it down with a stone well aimed. But it had been small, too small to satisfy completely the burning hunger that gripped them both. And there had been scant blood to drink.

Merena found it hard to remember that there had once been a few four-footed animals to feast on. They were gone now, along with the last, of the winged sky creatures. She swallowed hungrily.

Kogar picked up the sharpened stone by his side. In his great paw he held it ready, his eyes estimating the distance from their boulder to the creatures moving toward them. Too far yet.

It didn’t occur to Kogar that these creatures might be even as himself and Merena. Their bodies were covered by strange trappings, their legs encased in odd sheaths. Truly these were not of their kind. Kogar’s thick left paw gently stroked the bulging muscle beneath the thick mat of hair on his right arm. No, they were not as Merena and Kogar.

Kogar knew that there were no others such as himself and Merena. Once there had been. But they were gone now—along with the four-footed animals and the sky creatures. They had been few enough to begin with, and their numbers decreased until there were finally but himself and his mate. The others had not been cunning enough to keep their bellies filled, their thirsts quenched.

Still watching the approach of the strange creatures, Kogar thought back to that day in the compounds when the feeble old Chief lay dying. All around them, that day, women and children had lain white and sick and bloated. They were dying too. Kogar had gone to Merena. He had slipped from the compounds with her that night.

“We will leave these weaklings, and go forth to find meat for ourselves,” he had told her.

And they had. Scouring far and wide, farther even than the old tribal laws had permitted. Kogar took his mate in search of flesh to sustain life. That had been countless star-skies ago. Kogar could not remember how long. He knew, of course, that the others were dead by now. They had been foolish, and weak.

“See, Kogar,” Merena whispered, “the strange creatures halt!”

Kogar, jolted from his musings, turned his attention back to the strange creatures. They had stopped, several hundred paces away, and were making sounds at each other. They looked like animals quarreling.

For an instant, Kogar looked at the sharpened stone in his big hand. He lifted it once or twice doubtfully. A throw might bring one of them down. But if he missed, it would frighten them away. He wet his thick lips.

Merena put her hand on his arm.

“Wait,” she breathed, “do not frighten them.”

Kogar nodded. For an instant he considered moving out from behind his hiding place and chasing down after them. He was fleet of foot. He had trapped the last of the four-footed animals that way. But Kogar realized that he was weaker now and not so swift. Besides, he wasn’t certain how swift these strange creatures were in their own right. They might even be like the sky creatures, able to swoop up and away if frightened. Although he saw no signs of wings Kogar couldn’t be sure.

Merena touched his arm again.

“They move,” she whispered.

The creatures were indeed, moving toward them once more. Kogar wondered if there might not be a watering place nearby, unknown to him, to which they were going. He had found many such watering places by following the animals.

Kogar had a sudden idea. He turned to Merena.

“By that other great rock, over there,” he pointed a few hundred feet away to a boulder lying just behind the strange creatures, “you take your place.”

Merena looked uncomprehending Kogar picked up the second of his sharpened stones. He handed it to her. He had taught Merena to hurl the sharpened stones with a fair amount of skill and cunning. From short distances—if the targets moved slowly as these did—she was deadly.

“Behind that great rock,” Kogar repeated, “you take a place!”

Merena nodded, understanding. She smiled at her mate in open admiration of his superior cunning. Kogar was infinitely pleased by the implied compliment. Merena took the stone and flattened herself out on the ground, preparing to inch along to the other boulder.

“After I throw,” Kogar reminded her. “Wait until then.”

Stealthily, with the ability of long practice[1] Merena moved away toward the position her mate had indicated. Kogar watched her progress, aware at the same time that the strange creatures had given them additional advantage by halting again and making angry sounds at each other.

Almost at the same time that the strange creatures resumed their movement toward his boulder, Kogar saw Merena gain the shelter of the other great rock a hundred feet behind them.

* * * *

One of the strange creatures as it moved closer, brought forth a stick from its chest and put it in its mouth. Kogar frowned bewilderedly at this. Then the same strange creature produced a glittering thing and held it up to the stick.

The glittering thing puffed a tiny spurt of orange, then the stick smoked odd blue clouds. The tiny spurt of orange had disappeared now, and the creature put the glittering thing away. But the stick still made small blue clouds. And the blue clouds issued from the mouth of the creature as well.

Kogar shook his head, bewildered. Indeed these were oddly different animals.

Suddenly the creatures were close enough for Kogar to hear the sounds they made. Weird, unintelligible sounds.

“I’m for going back, Wolf!” one creature said. Or, at least that was the way the strange noises sounded to Kogar. His thick brows knit uncomprehendingly at these strange noises. They were communicating, of course, just as dogs communicate by whining, or birds by chirping. Nevertheless, it made Kogar uneasy.

Kogar growled softly in his throat. They were close enough now.

His eyes measuring the distance with deadly certainty, Kogar lifted the sharpened stone again, bringing it back behind his head, his muscles tightening like steel webbing.

Kogar was counting on surprise to hold them motionless long enough to hurl the stone. With most animals it worked that way.

Now, suddenly, thick lips flattened against his teeth in a snarl, Kogar rose from behind the boulder. So intent were the strange creatures that for an instant they didn’t see him. And in that instant Kogar hurled the stone with terrible force.

It caught one of the strange creatures squarely between the eyes, and from the sound it made, Kogar knew he’d crushed in its skull. Red, warm, delicious blood spurted forth from the wound as the creature toppled over dead.

Kogar yelled wildly now, and it had the frightening effect he wanted.

The other creature—the one with the stick in its mouth—was momentarily rooted with terror as it watched its companion fall. Then, on Kogar’s shrill whoop, it suddenly turned—the cloud stick falling to the ground—and dashed madly in the opposite direction, straight toward the boulder behind which Merena waited.

The creature was less than five paces from Merena’s boulder, when she rose, whooping just as Kogar had, but more shrilly.

The effect of this was just as the cunning Kogar had planned. The creature halted abruptly in terror, and in that split second, while it turned its head right and left seeking escape, Merena threw her pointed stone with incredible force and magnificent accuracy.

Kogar was forced to grunt in admiration at Merena’s skill, as the second strange creature shrieked once and fell to the ground. Blood gushed from its head, just as it had from the other.

* * * *

Kogar and Merena dragged the bodies of the two slain animals together, then, and with fierce exultation began to tear ravenously. This was flesh, warm and fine.

But the creatures were indeed strange. They had shells of dry flesh covering their bodies. Bloodless flesh, so it seemed. But these shells came away readily. Kogar examined them as they stripped them off.

The shells were the odd coverings Kogar had noticed at first. And they had many pouches. It was in one of these pouches, that Merena found the glittering thing that had puffed orange spurts.

The glittering thing lay in the same pouch as a packet of the cloud sticks. While Merena munched on the cloud sticks dubiously, Kogar toyed with the glittering thing. Suddenly it spurted orange. Kogar noted with astonishment that the orange held heat.

Gingerly, Kogar touched his finger to the orange heat, and brought it away with a sharp growl. He had never been burned before.

Merena dropped the packet of cloud sticks and came beside him.

“What is this orange god?” she asked.

Kogar shook his head.

“It brings warmth. But I do not dare to touch it again.”

Merena frowned.

“I remember,” she said, “a legend told to me about an orange god when I was a child in the compounds. It is a very old legend.” She turned away, walking to a pile of brush a few yards distant.

Returning with the brush, Merena placed it on the ground.

“Now,” she said. “Touch the orange god to this.”

Kogar obeyed. Flames crackled as a small fire grew. The two stood back, awed.

“It brings great warmth,” Kogar said, pleased.

Merena nodded.

“Over it we can warm the flesh of our kill,” she said. “We must never let this orange god die.”

Kogar turned the glittering object over in his hand. It stopped spurting orange. But there was still the fire at their feet. There was something cut into the side of the glittering object. And looking at it, Kogar failed to understand what the strange symbols meant.

“To Schmidt,” they read, “From the Leader. To mark loyalty and devotion in our Cause. And to bind our future, greater Civilization.”

Kogar shook his head bewilderedly. Then turned to Merena. The warmth from the orange god at their feet was incredibly pleasant.

Kogar said, “You are right. We must never let this die.”

1 Science has many instances on record of human beings, who, when placed in a savage environment, developed the faculties of the beast to a high degree. The ability to stalk a quarry, to move noiselessly, and to remain hidden from the eyes of an intended victim, is thought by some scientists to be an ingrained heredity, handed down to man by his ancestral past, when he was in the process of evolving from the actual beast, to the true man. But other scientists deny this, and insist that-it is environment alone that makes a man develop animalistic abilities. In this story we have an interesting commentary on this scientific conception.

Here, the author’s characters, placed by a terrible, civilization-wrecking war in a very primitive environment, forced to use mind, muscle, and stealthy cunning to procure food and to satisfy the most powerful of all urges, hunger, have slipped back in a few years to an animalistic plane that is actually not any different from that of the dawn man himself. Kogar and Merena are the products of our own civilization—yet, after the greatest of all wars, they become savages on a swift swoop back through time. Are we really as civilized as we think we are? And are we really as savage as we ever were in the past? Are men like Hitler really throwbacks?

DINOSAUR GOES HOLLYWOOD, by Emil Petaja

Originally published in Amazing Stories, November 1942.

Everything happens to me! First some slap-happy character gets me so jumpy I can’t even go out on the piazza and look at the stars with Susie May any more, without shuddering. It’s about that gargantuan space-ship that is going to smash up the whole world next April. So he said.

Then it happened again. Susie May dragged me over to Hollywood to a Colossus Production premiere of Never Never, at the Cathay Square Theatre. We sat on crowded benches outside for a dime, watching the celebrities parade in. Susie May loved it.

Afterward she said for me to wait for her, while she ran over to get Percy Parrish’s autograph. I told her I’d be in the Xotik bar-room, having a drink.

I sat at a corner table, sipping my sarsaparilla, and minding my own business—when all at once somebody slapped me hard on the back, making me give a stout gentleman at the next table a free shower bath.

“Hyah, chum!” this brawny individual said, grinning.

“I don’t know you,” I said coldly, looking him up and down through my heavy bifocals as if I had trouble even seeing him.

This individual was six-foot-four, at least. He had a beef-and-gravy appearance. Ex-football tackle, was my first impression.

He wasn’t put out, as I had hoped.

“I’m Jock Wemple!” he grinned jovially, extending an oversize hand. “Shake!”

I shook, then removed what was left of my hand, and massaged it tenderly, saying “Damn!” under my breath.

“Want I should tell you a story?” the individual named Jock Wemple suggested. He ordered three beers—to save the waiter trips.

“That premiere reminds me of one. About another premiere here at Cathay Square—some years ago. A scientific picture called Back To The Dawn. Remember?”

“No!” I said decisively. “And I don’t care to—”

“Come on, chum! It’ll pin your ears back!”

“Et tu, Brute,” I interposed sadly.

“Say, I know I ain’t no Tyrone Power,” he grinned crookedly. “But you don’t need to call me no brute! Who are you, anyhow?”

“Lemuel Mason is my name,” I told him. “I’m a bookkeeper by profession. Consolidated Cement.” I restrained a smile so as not to encourage him.

He nodded amiably. He seemed to take my introduction as a sign of approval, for he immediately swung into his story—

* * * *

“Like I already told you, I’m Jock Wemple. I used to be bodyguard and handy man for the big-shot scientist Stanton Greylock. Of course that was after I’d spent the best nine years of my life on a college football team. Learning pursuing—as they say…”

“Stanton Greylock was a small size guy with a droopy straw moustache. He always looked kind of sad, like as if he just got a letter edged in black. Maybe it was his cloudy gray eyes. I don’t know what he had to be sad about, though. He wasn’t married.

“Anyhow Greylock was one of the smartest guys in this country, or any place. Why, he won the Nobel prize twice running, with one hand tied behind his back!

“Me, I don’t know anything about science. I thought it meant ‘No Smoking’ until I took this job with Greylock.”

I cleared my throat importantly:

“Until he disappeared so strangely four years ago, Stanton Greylock was considered the world’s foremost authority of certain phases of physics and related sciences,” I put in, from my store of library magazine knowledge. “He was also keenly interested in paleontology.”

“Is that a fact?” Wemple blinked, somewhat put out. “Well, to get back to my story—

“That morning Greylock and me drove out to the La Brea Pits. Our station wagon was loaded to the roof with all kinds of scientific junk, including what looked like an old-time radio set, mounted on wheels.

“‘What gives with all this junk, Doc?’ I asks.

“‘I am going to try an experiment in Time,’ he told me solemnly. ‘Scientists have frequently dreamed of traveling backward or forward in Time. Personally, my research convinces me that it can be done. But the risks involved are so great that one would be foolhardy to attempt it.

“‘I have another plan—a much less dangerous plan. Simpler, and yet it presents an infinite variety of fascinating possibilities…’

“‘What I propose to do,’ Doc says, his face kind of shining, ‘is to employ what I call a Time-Net to snare—from out of the past—something that will be of value to science. Preferably a living creature.’

“‘Such as?’ I asks.

“‘Mmmm,’ Doc answered. I didn’t get it. But if Doc wanted to snare around for something out of back-time it was okay with me.

“I turned the station wagon off Wilshire Boulevard, and eased gently down a bump that led us into the La Brea Park. Where the big stone lizards are.

“‘Ah, here we are, Jock,’ Doc says, rubbing his hands together anxiously. ‘Park over by those bushes. Then help me unload and prepare the Time-Net.’

“It was a lulu of a gold-spangled morning. And it was bright and early. Traffic on Wilshire wasn’t heavy yet.

“I carted out all that heavy apparatus, and set it out just the way Doc directed me to. He picked a nice clear spot on the other side of a low footbridge, near one of those scummy dank-looking tar holes.

“I lugged for a while, and got pretty fagged.

“‘Say, Doc,’ I says. ‘Why don’t we pick some place what’s easier to get to. Where there ain’t no marshes. I know a swell stretch down by the beach—’

“‘You don’t understand, Jock,’ he says, waggling his head. ‘I don’t imagine that you even know what La Brea is famous for?’

“He eyed me hopefully, while he fiddled with gadgets on the machine that looked something like a radio.

“I blushed, and looked away. Over at one of those stone lizards.

“‘I’ll take a moment to explain,’ Doc said kindly. ‘La Brea Pits is famous as being the site of a remarkable discovery of dinosaur fossils from the Mesozoic Age. You really ought to avail yourself of the collection of fossils at the Exposition Museum, which were taken from La Brea.

“‘You see, Jock—a long, long time ago there were great pits of tar right here. And many of these great lumbering lizard creatures became mired in this tar. They died in the tar, and it preserved their bones remarkably well through the ages, in fossil form.

“‘Paleozoologists have been able to reconstruct these fossils into replicas of these Mesozoic dinosaurs. We know just about exactly what they looked like…

“‘What is most important to us, Jock, is that we know positively that dinosaurs were evident at this exact spot, in the Mesozoic Age. That’s why I chose this place for my first experiment…’”

“You have a remarkable memory, Mr. Wendt,” I observed, astonished at his use of words.

“That’s nothing,” Wendt said sheepishly, wiping a moustache of beer foam off his upper lip. “After what happened later I made it a point to find out about them.”

“Now,” I said, sliding toward the door. “If you don’t mind I’ll just—”

“Siddown!” Wendt growled. His vexed look vanished right away, and he went on—“Doc Greylock told me exactly how to rig up his Time-Net, while for the next half hour he kept tinkering with the knobs and wheels on his gadget.

“Finally he announced that he was all ready to start, and told me to get outside the circle which his Time-Net enclosed.

“Then he lugged out a special metal box from the station wagon—he wouldn’t let me lay a finger on it—and unlocked it. Very carefully he unwrapped a round white thing that looked like a big egg.

“‘Stand back!’ he yelled to me. ‘Away from the Net zone!’ And he tossed this egg into the middle of the circle.

“It burst. Clouds of vapor shot out on all sides of it. Pretty soon the circle was covered with a queer yellow fog, thick as pea soup.

“‘Now what?’ I asks, looking at the yellow fog warily.

“‘There’s nothing we can do but wait,’ Doc says. ‘My Time-Net is all set. If my calculations are correct we should snare something very soon. That circle of space enclosed by my Net has been transferred back to the Mesozoic Age!’

* * * *

“We waited. And waited.

“Nothing happened. Doc sent me out for lunch, and to bring him back a ham-and from a delicatessen. And then we waited some more.

“Doc had arranged to have cops guard all the entrances to the little park, so that no curious bystanders would get into anything.

“Toward evening I commenced to get restless. I had a torrid date with a dame called Ethel. One of those ravaging blondes. What that babe can do with a sweater—boy!

“We were planning on going to the big Back To The Dawn premiere, using passes Doc gave me. The studio sent them to him, on account he was what you call a—uh—I dunno. A scientific stooge on the picture. They’d ask him if such-and-such was authentic, and when he said no, they’d go right ahead and put it in anyhow.

“It was sure a break for me. I was borrowing Doc’s low-slung Dusenberg. Make a big splash with Ethel.

“So about five o’clock, I reminded the Doc.

“He heaved a couple sighs. ‘You’re right, Jock,’ he says sadly. ‘We may as well go home. The yellow fog is almost gone, and nothing’s appeared yet. I must have made a mistake somewhere. I’ll go over to my laboratory and check over my computations.’

“He asked the cops to stand guard for a couple hours more just in case. Then we packed up the Time-Net, and scrammed.

“Back home, I slipped into my tux, looking pretty zoot-suit if I do say so. Then I drove over and picked up Ethel.

“She had poured herself into one of those Dorothy LaMarr slinkers, and made me wish I had on dark glasses. Did she glitter!

“We stopped for dinner at the Brown Derby, me blowing half a week’s pay to make a good impression. Then I lit a Corona-Corona, and sent the hack purring down Wilshire Boulevard toward the Cathay Square Theatre. I was all set for a large evening…

“I slid Ethel a shy-violet look, and then all of a sudden saw her pretty pan change into a mask of surprised horror.

“‘What’s the beef?’ I inquired.

“‘Look!’ she screamed, pointing out the side window. ‘A monster!’

* * * *

“I looked.

“She wasn’t kidding! We were right near the La Brea Pits again, and, shambling out of the Doc’s Time-Net circle on mammoth earth-shaking pins, flopping a gigantic tail behind him, was a dinosaur!

“I knew right away that was what he was because he looked a lot like one of them stone lizards in the park, only ten times bigger. Also he looked like a model of a dinosaur what was worked by a man inside it—that I saw when I was out at a Colossus Picture’s set, when they were shooting Back To The Dawn.

“Ethel shrieked again, blotting the sight away with her red-nailed fingers.

“I braked the car at the curb, and sat rubbering at the dino. What a sight he was! Must have been fifty feet high, and bigger than six elephants rolled into one.

“He made a kind of slobbering noise with his mouth, and weaved his long serpentine neck slowly from side to side. He looked like he was plenty surprised, too, to find himself in the middle of Hollywood—instead of among a lot of funny looking fern trees back in the Mesozoic Age.

“He was brilliantly colored—sort, of orange and vivid green shades—and from him there came an ugly swamp odor…

“He looked around with his silly little eyes, and that simpery smile on his homely snake’s puss. He didn’t seem much bothered by the gaping crowd that stopped their cars to stand around him and look—but nobody got very close.

“There was a couple minor smash-ups, and three or four frails passed out cold, but nothing very serious happened.

“At last he headed out, seeming to know just where he wanted to go. He lumbered thunderously out into the middle of Wilshire Boulevard, which was blocked off for the big premiere. He paid no attention to the frantic drivers, just shuffled nonchalantly toward the Cathay Square Theatre, his long snaky neck still weaving slowly from side to side.

“It was almost like daylight, on account of all the searchlights. They stabbed up into the dark sky. Hollywood’s way of telling everybody what’s coming off.

“Ethel shuddered, putting her taffy hair up close to me. I was making the most of the situation when a cop poked his head in the window and barked,

“‘Say, you’re Doctor Greylock’s handy man, aren’t you?’

“‘I’m his assistant,’ I corrected him.

“‘This is his car, ain’t it?’ he snapped. ‘Where is the Doc? He told three of my boys to stand guard over the La Brea Pits entrances, but he didn’t let on this was going to happen! That monster’s on the loose! You’d better get hold of Greylock right away!’

“‘Sure,’ I says, letting loose of Ethel. ‘Right now!’

* * * *

“I found Doc Greylock puttering away in his lab.

“‘I think I know what was wrong now,’ he said almost happily, nodding to me as I stepped in. ‘My calculations were inaccurate by only a few hours. If we hurry right over to La Brea—’

“‘Doc!’ I yells. ‘You found out too late! It’s come already!’

“‘What—’ he started to say.

“‘The dinosaur! One of those giant lizards! He’s lumbering along up Wilshire toward the premiere! Holy sugar-bags—if we don’t get up there and do something, I don’t know what’ll break loose in that mob up there!’

He jumped back a little, looking at me kind of funny, then started frantically building one of his Time-Bombs.

“‘Jock, we must hurry!’ he rasps, his hands flying around the table, mixing chemicals. ‘Not a minute to lose! I’ll never forgive myself if—’

“‘Take it easy, Doc,’ I warns him. ‘You’ll blow a fuse if you don’t slow down. I’ll get all the junk loaded in the station wagon, and send Ethel home in a cab.’

“I went out, and done it. I was plenty excited, myself, but I knew somebody better keep on the beam, else we’d never even get over there.

“Ethel was glad to go home. She said her mother would kick her out in the street if she went cavorting around with a mess of zoic monsters. Hollywood woof-woofs was bad enough.

“It wasn’t long until we were spinning burn-rubber down side streets. I wanted to make time. We finally got within a couple blocks of the theatre. There the crowds stopped us.

“I used a little Hollywood lip-magic about being chauffeur to a movie mogul who had to get through. That got us a ways in, but then the crowd wouldn’t budge.

“The crowd was gabbing hilariously. I heard one slick haired bozo shout to his red-head gal, ‘This here Brindell van Hastings sure does things up right! Imagine a mechanical monster what’s that big! I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it!’

“‘Ain’t it the truth, Joe,’ the redhead wagged, gleefully. ‘You wouldn’t know it from a real whatdumacallus, wouldja?’

“Doc groaned.

“‘Get them, Doc!’ I yelled in exasperation. ‘They all think it’s part of the show! They think it’s a studio prop, built for use in the movie, and lumbering around as an advertising stunt!’

“Still groaning, Doc stepped out of the car, pulling me with him.

“‘We’ve got to get further in, through this crowd!’ he yells. ‘But how?’

“‘Follow me!’ I tells him. I wasn’t a football tackle nine years just for fun.

“It wasn’t long before we were in the dress circle.

“We gave the dinosaur a close-up look.

“‘A brontosaurus!’ Doc yells delightedly.

“‘Yeah?’ is my comment. ‘Well, he is beginning to look irritated. I don’t think he likes Hollywood night life. Nobody seems to have been hurt yet, but—’

“Doc’s dinosaur did look peeved. His flabby lips drew back in a snarl, showing his teeth. He sort of bristled up on his hind legs, like a walking mountain, and his snaky neck darted from one side to the other.

“He still headed for the theatre, shaking the earth as he shambled along the little flag-laden parkway in the middle of the wide boulevard. Right across from his great shadowy bulk was the theatre entrance, blazing with light.

“There, under a flower-banked canopy were the stars of Back To The Dawn, Dorothy LaMarr and Stanley Smoosh, dithering into a microphone.

“Suddenly, as I glanced around, I heard a lot of commotion off to one side. Then Brindell van Hastings’ fat torso pushed out of the sidelines, followed by a flock of cameramen and props carrying cameras and flood-lights.

“Brindell van Hastings was one of Hollywood’s ace flicker men. He was producer-director of the premiere opus. He yelled and gesticulated at his men.

“They propped up their sound cameras and flood-lights, and went to work, under his orders.

“There were about half a million other cameras snapping and blinking up at Doc’s brontosaurus, too. Reporters, newsreel men, and amateurs. No wonder the dino was annoyed.

“He unclamped his jaws, slavered, and uttered a thunderous squeal. Then he lumbered over and dumped one of the cameras, sending the cameraman sprawling.

“‘You big baboon!’ Van Hastings yells, shaking his fist up at him. He whirled on his men. ‘Get all this action, you nincompoops—or I’ll chop you!’

“‘Quick, Jock!’ Doc Greylock yells, pulling my arm. ‘You start wheeling the Time-Net out, and set the cable up around him, while I go and enlist the aid of the police!’

“So I started carting the junk out of the station wagon, shoving bystanders aside.

“‘What’s up, Bub?’ the guy with the red-head asks importantly, grabbing my arm.

“‘Listen,’ I tells him. ‘That dino is on the level. And if you and this whole bunch of boobs knows what’s good for you, you’ll blow!’ There upon I socked him for being so familiar.

“Things commenced to happen thick and fast after that.

“Word spread around that the dino wasn’t a fakus, and before long the whole mob was bleating and milling like a herd of sheep.

“It was my last trip. I wheeled the Doc’s gadget ahead of me like a kiddie-car. The monster started cleaning up.

“I heard a shrill feminine shriek. It was Dorothy LaMarr. Her dress was gold, and shone fit to knock your eyes right out through the back of your head.

“I wouldn’t know whether the dino liked that or didn’t like it. Anyway, he made a sideways grab at her with one of his slow-moving nippers—the size of a steam-shovel scoop.

“I was too far away to do anything. Not that I would have anyway. Who but a dope wants to pick on a walking mountain?

“But Stanley Smoosh did something. He started to run away. His cute face was drained white as a blotter.

“But his foot got tangled up in the train of Dorothy LaMarr’s dress, and he fell flat, right plop on Dorothy.

“This was a break for her, as it turned out, on account of the dino missed her, and had to draw his claw back for another grab.

“By this time Dorothy and Stanley Smoosh, hugging each other like they never even had done in flickers, crawled hurriedly away to hide in a hole somewhere.

“Which wasn’t a bad idea.

“Me, I had to get real close to the monster, in order to set out the boundaries for the Time-Net. He caught sight of me, and turned on me curiously.

“The place was a pandemonium. Everybody was wise by now that this was the real McCoy. Not a reasonable facsimile.

“They were shrieking, and yelling, and trampling each other underfoot. Made a kind of Roman holiday of it.

“Van Hastings’ cameras were still rolling, getting it all in. He stood off to one side, yelling directions. His strident voice topped them all.

“I edged around the dino, spreading out the heavy coil of wires that was to mark the Time-Net limits. And when I edged, he edged.

“His snaky head weaved downward to get a good look at what I was up to. His funny eyes blinked at me coldly.

“Finally I had the time circle around him. I knocked down a couple of Van Hastings’ flood-lights to do it, and he let loose with a couple of old Armenian curses.

“‘Go peel an apple-knocker,’ I says.

“I caught a glimpse of Doc running toward me and the dino, with a battery of cops on his tail. I turned to yell at him.

“About that time I felt a slimy claw reach around my mid-section, and sweep me up in the air. First thing I knew the palms; searchlights, and mob was all way down below.

“I sweated, struggled, and yelled. Then I was peering into the ugliest puss I ever hope to see. Awful green and brown and orange, with cold lizard’s eyes, and a red gaping mouth. The odor that came out of it gagged me.

“‘Let me down, King Kong!’ I hollers. ‘You’re pinching my belly!’

“Down below, running back and forth, was Doc Greylock. And in his hand he held the Time-Bomb.

“‘Throw it!’ I yells.

“‘No!’ his far-off voice protests. ‘You don’t want to go back to the Mesozoic too, do you?’

“I could see what he meant. It looked bad.”

* * * *

“What happened, Mr. Wemple?” I asked breathlessly. Very deliberately, he called the waiter over, and ordered three more beers.

“You ain’t interested, chum,” Wemple grinned aggravatingly. “No. You don’t want to hear my story. I’ll stop now!”

“Please, Mr. Wemple,” I said very humbly. “Don’t stop now! The brontosaurus has got you in his clutches!”

“Okay, chum,” he grinned. “I was only kidding. Well—

“The idea was to get him to set me down easy, if possible. Instead of plucking me to pieces, or tossing me clear down to Central Avenue…

“I yanked out this little pen knife I always carry on the other end of my watch chain. I jabbed it into his claw.

“He let out a funny squeal, looking down at me questioningly.

“I jabbed him again. He swung me around until I didn’t know from nothing.

“I found out later Doc distracted him some way, and he swung his claw down, tossing me carelessly away. I passed out cold.

“But not before I vaguely glimpsed Doc draw back, like a Notre Dame left end, and toss his Time-Bomb…

“When I woke I was lying on grass. That scared me. Grass! I didn’t dare open my eyes for a couple seconds. Then somebody grabbed my arms, and turned me over.

“I blinked my peepers open. ‘Doc!’ I yells. ‘Are we in the Mesozoic?’

“‘No, Jock.’ Doc felt me over for broken bones. ‘I thought you’d be half-dead. You seem to be indestructible!’

“‘Where’s our playmate?’ Tasks, pushing up on my pins, and squinting dizzily around.

“He’d tossed me on the parkway grass, which helped break my fall a trifle. But no brontosaurus could I see.

“‘Back where he came from,’ Doc says. ‘A sadder and wiser lizard, no doubt. You know, Jock, I’ve just figured out something that has been puzzling me for some time. Just why the dinosaur was so persistent in his drive to get to the Theatre—’

“‘Maybe he ain’t never seen a premiere,’ I puts in.

“‘Jock, I think the Cathay Square Theatre is now standing in the exact spot that was his home-site, back in the Mesozoic. Instinct immediately brought him here, and when he didn’t find his mate waiting for him, he became furious.

“‘The brontosaurus was a herbivorous lizard. He wouldn’t have eaten anyone, but—’

“‘But he sure could have trampled this joint into a shambles!’ I finished for him.

“The police herded the crowd gently away, but a lot of them stayed. The feeling persisted that this had been all part of the show. And would you believe it, they went right ahead with the premiere.

“A medium sized crowd hemmed us in, curious-eyed. All at once Brindell van Hastings bristled through, and marched importantly up to the Doc.

“‘So you’re the scientist who invented the Time-Net, that brought back the dinosaur!’ he cries, sizing the Doc up. He shoved a paper and pen into Doc’s hands. ‘Sign right there, on the dotted line!’

“‘What is—?’ Doc begins puzzledly.

“Van Hastings looked around him fearfully, as if he was afraid of rival studio spies, and then bent over pompously and whispered something in Doc’s ear.

“‘What did you say?’” Doc exclaims.

“Van Hastings gives a repeat performance. This time I shove my shell-like ear in and get the low-down.

“It was like this: Van Hastings wanted Doc Greylock to use his Time-Net to reach back in time and snare glamour gals like Cleopatra, Salome, and Helen of Troy, right out of their boudoirs—for him to star in exclusive autobiographical movies of their lives!

“Wow! I waited eagerly to hear what sad-faced old Doc Greylock would say to that. Knowing how he never had much use for women before, I doubted that he would approve.

“Doc’s eyes glittered. He pulled at his straw moustache, like he always did when in deep thought.

“‘Van Hastings!’ he says suddenly. ‘I will not sign on any dotted line! I will not get Cleopatra and Salome out of the past—for you to star in your misinformative epics! But you have given me a very marvelous idea! Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to—’”

* * * *

“Lem Mason, I’m surprised at you!” a shocked feminine voice behind me cried.

I was following Jock Wemple’s narrative breathlessly, so only glanced back in annoyance. But one glance was enough.

It was Susie May. She was standing in the bar-room doorway, tapping her foot. And when Susie May taps her foot, look out.

“Susie May!” I choked. “Er—have a drink?”

She sauntered over. “I will not have a drink, you wolf in cheap clothing! Sitting here talking about other girls behind my back, right in front of my face. I heard you!”

She talked so fast she swallowed her gum.

“But, Susie! We were only talking about Cleopatra. You know her!”

Her eyes snapped fire.

“I sure do know about her! She’s one of those burlesque queens down at the Folly Theayter on Main Street!”

She pulled me toward the door, tossing Mr. Wemple a look of scorn.

“Come away from that Hollywood smasher. He’s a bad influence on you, Lem!”

“But—”

At the doorway, as she whirled me out, I clung to the edge of the bar and yelled back,

“What was it the Doc said, Wemple? Quick!”

He looked up from his sixth beer, winked and nodded rakishly.

“Doc says to Brindell van Hastings, ‘You’ve given me a marvelous idea! I’m going to build me a hideaway some place far away, and bring back some of them historical glamour gals—all for myself!’”

TIME OUT FOR TOMORROW, by Richard Wilson

Originally published in Science Fantasy, December 1957.

Darius Dale banged on the speaker’s table with his empty highball glass in an attempt to bring the Omega Club to order. He didn’t have instant success because many of the members and guests had some holiday cheer in their glasses and others were at the bar getting refills. It was the Omega’s Club annual Christmas party and Darius, the chairman of the entertainment committee, was having his usual trouble getting people to sit down and pay attention.

Any other responsible scientist who had been visited by a man from the future probably would not have asked his visitor to become, in effect, a vaudeville performer. But Darius at the age of thirty was not yet altogether responsible. He had been a science fiction writer long before he became an electronics engineer and had never lost the prankishness which was reflected in some of his best stories.

And the Omega Club—that amorphous collection of science fiction writers, editors, illustrators, agents and just plain readers—was Darius’ first love.

Besides, it was the Christmas season, which meant a skit for the Christmas party. Darius Dale, perennial chairman in charge of the skit, had been procrastinating this year and had prepared nothing. His big worry had been a rush rewrite of the last two chapters of his new magazine serial—the first installment of which had already been published. It just happened to be a time travel yarn. So, when the time traveler made his appearance in Darius’ writing room one evening in late November, the nimble Dale mind quickly worked out several ways in which the visitor might be helpful.

* * * *

The hubbub of the Christmas party showed no signs of abating.

Darius shrugged and put his glass down. He buttoned his double-breasted coat and around his generous middle and killed time by telling his story about the old maid and the Martian. Groans and cries of protest came from those already seated but Darius only leered at them and went on with the story, varying it here and there from last year’s version and dragging in the names of prominent club members as incidental characters.

Darius finally reached the punch line—”‘By Deimos and Phobos,’ The Martian said, rubbing his eyes in the morning light, ‘two more!’”—and was rewarded with boos and jeers, as was customary.

By now the last straggler had seated himself. The straggler was James Overholt Edison, the science fiction editor who signed his editorials “—joe,” but who instead had come to be known to his readers as Old Overholt. He was pushing thirty-five, at most, and generally was sober.

“I missed your story, Darius,” Edison said pleasantly, stirring his fresh drink with a forefinger. “Would you mind repeating it?”

“Gladly, Joe,” said Darius, baring his teeth in a simulated smile. “I’ll have it on your desk next week, at my usual three and a half cents a word.”

“Frankly,” said Edison, “I’d be happier to see the re-do of the time-travel yarn. The printer’s having an ulcer. Just like mine.”

“I didn’t think this was a business meeting,” said Walter Crown, the agent, “but if it is I want my ten percent, Darius.”

“My right arm up to the elbow you’ve already got, Walter,” said Darius. “How much more?”

“As much more as it takes to make the next payment on his Cadillac,” said Edison. “That’s how much.”

“It’s only a Buick,” Walter Crown protested good-naturedly, “and I’m its sole support.”

“Buick-schmuick,” cried Darius Dale banging on the table again. “The meeting will come to order and be entertained. The feature of the evening, ladies and gentlemen, an act guaranteed to thrill and astound—not to mention astonish and amaze—has been obtained for your delectation at great trouble and expense.”

“How much expense?” demanded Jennie Rhine, the glamour-girl secretary-treasurer of the Omega Club.

“At ease!” cried Darius. “Hardly as much as you get for one of your illustrations, Jennie. Fifty dollars. I say it at the risk of embarrassing our guest, whose name…”

“Fifty dollars!” Jennie shrieked theatrically. She shook her dark head in dismay. “And just when I thought the books might balance.”

“A little dignity, please!” bellowed Darius. “Let’s not drag the good name of the Omega Club through these sordid financial gutters. Our many distinguished guests,” he said, looking around the large room through his thick horn-rims, “include, I have been told, a Life photographer and, for better or worse, one of the brighter young men from The New Yorker.”

“Gosh-wow-boyoboy!” quoted a thirsty member who was on his way to the bar.

“That was Time, George,” Darius said. “And why don’t you come back and sit down quietly before they reprint that precious little slander. George! If you insist on going out there, bring me one, too—Scotch and water.”

George Granger, the novelist, nodded and kept going barwards.

* * * *

“Let’s get the show on the road, Darius,” Edison said and began to stamp his feet. Others joined in, beating out the slow rhythm of an impatient audience.

A portly figure stood up and went “Ahem” and “If you please” until the stomping ceased.

“Not now, Zorry,” said Darius hopefully.

“I insist,” said Zoroaster Ramm, the critic and anthologist. “I feel I must, under the circumstances, acquaint our new friends here tonight with the true aim of the Omega Club, lest they wrongly conclude that it is merely the gathering of juvenile science fictionists and—and—”

“Drunken crackpots.” George Granger supplied the description as he ambled back from the bar and handed Darius his drink. “Or maybe cracken drunkpots, Zorry. You admonish ’em, keed.”

Zoroaster Ramm smiled with what he imagined to be indulgence and waited for the laughter to die down. “It was not my intention to admonish anyone. I’ll leave that to the distinguished editor of Admonishing Stories.” He waited for a laugh of his own, but the only response was a polite smile from Edison, the editor of Astonishing Science Fiction. “However, at the risk of boring you—”

“Hear! Hear!” cried a voice from behind him.

“—at the risk of restating something already known to many here,” Zoroaster Ramm plowed on, “science fiction is not an adolescent hobby, but a finger pointing the way to the future, the harbinger of the stars, so to speak; the first faltering step—”

“Thank you very much, Zorry,” Darius said quickly, looking at his watch. “I’m sure we all agree. And now for the feature presentation of the evening, which happens to be not the finger to the future, as Mr. Ramm so putly apt it—aptly put it—what’s in this drink, George?—but the finger from the future, together with all the rest of him…Mr. Future himself!”

Darius Dale gestured with a flourish to the emptiness beside him on the speaker’s platform.

Nothing happened, except that Zoroaster Ramm sat down regretfully, looking hurt.

Darius looked at his watch again, held it up to his ear, shrugged and asked: “Who’s got the right time?”

He got a dozen different answers, mingled with catcalls. “Well, anyhow,” he said, “at ten-thirty, whenever that is, Mr. Future will make his appearance from the year 2017.”

Even as he spoke there was a shimmering in the air next to him and a whining hum. The shimmering became the outline of a man—a tall man wearing silvery shorts and some sort of metallic hardness over his bronzed skin, with a heavy cloak thrown back from his shoulders.

Then everything coalesced in an instant and the man stood there, solid, but blinking and looking a bit pale in the forehead. Handsome, too, Jennie Rhine observed, and not too young.

Mr. Future’s cloak was the last thing to stop shimmering and even after it did the whining hum continued in an undertone as it gradually faded away.

* * * *

The applause was thunderous—certainly more than Darius had hoped for. Of course they thought it was a trick, but it was gratifying to know they considered it a good one.

The man with the cloak blinked around in the direction of Darius Dale and said, “Hello, Papa.”

“I’m not your father, Dare,” Darius said. “I’m your great-grandfather.”

“I know,” the other said. “Too long. Call you Papa.”

“Okay,” said Darius. “Let’s make the introductions. Ladies and gentlemen—and George—I want you to meet Darius Dale IV, born March third, 1993, and therefore now twenty-four years old.

“He’s travelled backwards through time from the year 2017, where he’s attending Harvard business school prior to retiring. I’ll explain that in a moment. His cloak—I guess you heard it hum—is the secret of it all. I’ll explain that, too, as far as I can. But in the meantime there might be a question or two among you. Yes, Joe?”

James Overhold Edison stood up and straightened his grin into a serious expression.

“Astonishing Science Fiction, in the spirit of the evening,” he said, “will gladly pay one thousand dollars for an exclusive five thousand word ASF fact article by Mr. Future, with options.”

“Noted,” said Darius. “You’ll have a chance to back down later, but you’d be getting a bargain if Dare were interested. Walter?”

“He’ll need an agent,” said Walter Crown. “And seeing how he’s a relative of yours I’ll take him on without reading fees.”

“Very generous,” said Darius. “George?”

“I’ll buy him a drink, if he drinks.”

“Thanks,” said Darius Dale IV before his great-grandfather could speak for him. “I’ll take it.”

“Time travelling must be dry work,” George Granger said. “Come on to the bar, son. Let’s get away from the shop talk.”

“Can’t now. Papa.”

“Papa be damned,” said George. “Where you come from, Papa Darius is a moldering corpse.”

“Corpse my time machine!” protested Darius. “In the year 2017 I’m only ninety-four. Dare told me. Stout as an oak, too, I might add.”

“This presupposes that Darius the Fourth has visited you before,” said Jennie Rhine. “As long as we’re pretending to be gullibilized you might as well give us the story from the beginning.”

* * * *

While Darius launched into an account of how Darius IV had discovered the time warp and learned to take advantage of it, the young man from the future sidled off and joined George Granger at the bar. After a while, as Darius the elder began to get cute and repetitious, Jennie went to join them.

“Hi, Jen,” George welcomed her. “Old Darius still spellbinding ’em?”

“Well, he does have a way with him,” she said. “Ergo, it’s obvious that they think he’s the show and young Dare here is just a prop.”

Dare, his cloak slung over his arm, smiled shyly and signaled the bartender to make a drink for Jennie. The bartender was taking Dare and his futuristic costume in stride. As an old-timer at Omega Club parties, he’d also seen Men from Mars, head-bandaged and goggled Invisible Men and Bug-Eyed Monsters.

George said: “The way you talk, Jen, a person would think you had some doubt about it all being a hoax.”

“I keep an open mind,” Jennie Rhine said. “What’s yours like?”

“I’m on Dare’s side,” George said. “A man ought to know where he’s from. Besides, he talks different and has a different viewpoint on things. Alien, sort of; the same way I imagine I’d be if I barged in on my great-grandfather’s time. Forgive me for talking about you as if you were the lamppost, Dare.”

“Nyun,” said Dare.

“That’s one of the things, Jen, that ‘nyun.’ Obviously it means ‘Don’t mention it,’ or ‘That’s okay,’ but it’s a word we don’t have—just the way great-grandpa didn’t have ‘take off’ for ‘leave.’ That’s a characteristic of his conversation, generally. All of his phrases are clipped. Laconic is the word for Darius the Fourth.”

The bartender handed Jennie her drink and she flashed a smile at him and let it continue to glow as she turned to Dare.

“That’s pretty slim proof,” she said, “—meaning no disrespect to 2017.”

“Oh, there’s lots more,” George said. “For instance, I know who’s going to win the Kentucky Derby next year, and the Rose Bowl game, and how the heavyweight championship is going to go, and how long it’ll be before the other party gets the Presidency again—things like that. Very useful stuff, moneywise.”

“Hmm,” Jennie mused. “But nothing you can check up right away. And even then it could be no more than good guess-work.”

“That’s true,” George said. “But somehow it’s not what Dare says, it’s the odd ways he says it that has me more than half convinced he’s one of Darius’ science-fiction yarns come true. Now you take his accent—”

“Love to,” she said. “Except that at the rate you’re using yours, his never gets a chance. Maybe Dare and I should go sit at one of the tables and talk while you go in and heckle Darius. Come on, Mr. Future, and tell me what my great-granddaughter has been doing with herself lately.”

George took the hint and exited, first warning the young man: “Beware this glamourpuss. Face-of-an-angel but heart-of-ice type.”

“Nyun,” said Dare, smiling.

“Meaning,” Jennie Rhine called after George, “I don’t believe a word of it.”

Darius Dale was still going strong. George took a seat in the back row and listened.

“…and since I can see you still think it’s an elaborate gag I may as well tell you exactly what my great-grandson plans to do with his fifty-dollar fee. By a few judicious bets on long shots at the race track and by spreading smart money around at the ringside he’ll soon have a tidy little sum to invest legitimately in a family trust. I guess you’re all aware what a few thousand invested in General Motors about the time of World War I would be worth today. Well, Darius IV has made notes from the New York Times over the next half century and his money doesn’t come any smarter.

“Needless to say, I’ll be investing money of my own right along with him. I’ll be living quite comfortably for the rest of my life—but when Dare gets back to his own time he’ll be a millionaire in the flick of an eye.”

Darius had a lot more to say but he had become serious and his audience was getting restless.

He eased back into a lighter vein, told his story about the robot and the girls’ finishing school, then stepped down from the platform. The audience applauded and began to drift out to the bar.

George Granger managed to corner Darius alone after a while and said:

“You’re serious about this thing, aren’t you, Darius?” Darius squinted through his glasses and said:

“What makes you think so, George?”

“This and that. But if you are, you’d better go round up your boy. Our girl Jen has her hooks in him. I don’t know why exactly, aside from the obvious fact that he’s lady bait, but I have a feeling something’s up.”

“Where are they?”

“Out in the bar, at a table.”

Darius, looking concerned, headed that way with George at his heels.

“At what table, where?”

“That’s where they were,” George said, pointing. But Zoroaster Ramm was sitting there now, talking earnestly to a squirming young writer.

The bartender remembered seeing Jennie and the entertainer go down the broad staircase, toward the coat room, he said. It had been a little while ago. The check room attendant said the girl and the entertainer gentleman had picked up her coat, and the doorman remembered putting them into a cab. The trail ended there.

* * * *

Darius’ cab waited while he pounded at the door of Jennie Rhine’s apartment. There was no answer and the door was locked. Darius got back into the cab and gave the driver the address of Jennie’s studio.

The studio was in a loft building in a section of the city that once had been bohemian. As Darius climbed the stairs he saw that there was a light under the door, and when he found the door unlocked he burst in.

The two of them were sitting on pillows on the floor in the glow of a Sears Roebuck space heater. Dare’s cloak was folded neatly beside him. A bottle of wine and two glasses were sitting precariously on the shag rug between them. An easel was holding a bare canvas and there was a palette with fresh gobs of paint on it lying on top of an up-ended crate. Darius regarded the set-up with suspicious—Jennie rarely used oils.

Darius IV had the look of a conspirator on his face, but Jennie’s expression blazed anger.

“Just what are you doing here?” she demanded. “And have you forgotten there’s a custom called knocking at the door?”

Darius ignored her. “Dare,” he said. “You’d better come with me.”

Before the young man could speak, Jennie scrambled to her feet. She began to shove Darius in the direction of the door, whispering to him fiercely.

“Why don’t you leave the kid alone? He’s done his job, making a spectacle of himself for you and your Omegans. Now let him relax a little. It’s Christmastime, you know.”

Darius stood his ground. Darius IV continued to sit cross-legged on the rug. He took a sip of wine and looked fixedly at the big toe sticking out of the end of his sandal.

“I don’t like this little tête-à-tête,” the older Darius said. “Why don’t you pick on someone a little less innocent to relax with, Jen?”

“Dare happens to be fond of me,” she whispered back. “And I’ll thank you to keep your long nose out of my affairs. After all, he’s of age.”

“Not in this century, he isn’t,” said Darius. “Now be a good girl and shoo him out.”

“I’m not a good girl, as you well know, and I won’t shoo him out. It just so happens that he’s—well, he thinks he’s in love with me and he’s going to take me back with him. His cloak is big enough to take the two of us.”

“So that’s the game?” Darius raised his voice. “I guess his fortune will be big enough, too! I always knew you didn’t have many morals, but I didn’t think you were a gold digger.”

Jennie’s flashing palm put a ruby glow on Darius’ cheek. Dare got to his feet, alarmed now.

“Matter, Papa?” he asked. “Matter, Jen?”

Darius whirled on his great-grandson. “Did you promise to take this—this woman back to your time?” he demanded.

“I—yes.” Dare seemed to be holding a discussion with himself and then verbalizing its conclusion: “It’s love.”

“Love! You must be crazy, son. Why, she’s a good ten years older than you are. And you don’t fall in love just like that!” He snapped his fingers.

Dare snapped his own fingers. He grinned. “Old fashioned,” he said.

Darius waited, but that seemed to be Dare’s complete argument.

Jennie smiled a maddening, victorious smile.

“I’m glad that’s settled,” she said. “Now, Papa, will you leave us love-birds alone?”

Darius thought hard, his fictioneering mind seeking a denouement to this plot that was not of his own making.

“All right,” he said finally. “But first I’d like to have a word with my great-grandson alone. Come, Dare.”

* * * *

He led the young man to the back of the studio and there, among a welter of old canvases, stacks of magazines and a plaster reproduction of Michelangelo’s David he talked intensely and at some length.

Dare listened, politely at first, then seriously, and in the end he was shooting unhappy glances at Jennie Rhine.

She was nervously kicking the leg of the space heater when the two finished their conversation. Darius was looking unpleasantly smug.

“Well?” she said tentatively.

Young Dare was coming toward her with his arms outstretched. She shot a puzzled look at Darius, but then smiled at Dare and went to him, her face turned up to his.

But Dare didn’t gather her in his arms. He took both her hands, squeezed them gently and kissed her respectfully on the cheek. Then he picked up his cloak and went to the door. He opened it, paused, sighed heavily and said:

“Bye, Mama.”

Then he was gone.

“The taxi’s right in front of the door,” Darius called after him. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Jennie Rhine remained thunderstruck for about ten ticks of a grandfather clock. The slamming of the street door below brought her out of it.

“Mama!” she screamed. “Mama? What did you tell him?”

“Merely,” said Darius smoothly, “that you and I, Jennie dear, had once had a little affair, of which there was issue. I also said that because you showed no interest in the child, I had taken it and was bringing it up in my name, as Darius Dale, Junior.”

Jennie Rhine was having trouble with her larynx.

“I think I might have added,” Darius said complacently, “that therefore if he ran away with you he’d be eloping with his own great-grandmother.”

Jennie got her voice back with a rush.

“You filthy liar!” she yelled. “You deliberately told him a thing like that! Why, it’s unthinkable! And he believed that I—With you? You fat…”

“Of course he believed it,” Darius said. “I’ve had a long career of making the improbable sound convincing. At any rate it quite dampened his ardor.”

* * * *

No one ever saw Dare again.

Darius Dale vanished a few days later—but not before he had placed a large number of parlays on long shots, put all his winnings into a bet on the Rose Bowl game and then taken a suitcase full of cash to an investment broker in Wall Street.

The Missing Persons Bureau later established that the last person to see Darius had been the cab driver who took him from Wall Street to his apartment in East 61st Street.

Astonishing Science Fiction failed to receive the rewrite of the last two chapters of Darius’ time-travel serial. Nor was the magazine able to find the original ending among Darius’ effects.

The editor, after communing with his ulcer, printed the serial unfinished and at the end of it ran a factual note in which all the circumstances of the author’s disappearance were set forth. The note was attested to by Darius’ fellow author, George Granger, Walter Crown, the agent, and the editor,—Joe himself. A notary public witnessed their signatures.

A few readers of Astonishing Science Fiction, when the issue appeared, wrote to say they thought it was a pretty clever way to end a time-travel yarn and that they were looking forward to seeing more of Darius Dale’s work. The majority of those who wrote, however, were outraged at what they considered a cheap editorial trick and demanded that a proper ending be printed in the next issue.

Life and The New Yorker decided it was a publicity stunt unworthy of their attention and the newspapers ignored Darius’ disappearance on the same grounds.

But a surprising number of members of the blasé Omega Club were almost entirely convinced that Darius Dale had left wrapped in his great-grandson’s cloak for the year 2017 so he could be a millionaire at the age of thirty instead of ninety-seven.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO! by R. R. Fehrenbach

Originally published in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, December 1961.

Toward sundown, in the murky drizzle, the man who called himself Ord brought Lieutenant colonel William Barrett Travis word that the Mexican light cavalry had completely invested Bexar, and that some light guns were being set up across the San Antonio River. Even as he spoke, there was a flash and bang from the west, and a shell screamed over the old mission walls. Travis looked worried.

“What kind of guns?” he asked.

“Nothing to worry about, sir,” Ord said. “Only a few one-pounders, nothing of respectable siege caliber. General Santa Anna has had to move too fast for any big stuff to keep up.” Ord spoke in his odd accent. After all, he was a Britainer, or some other kind of foreigner. But he spoke good Spanish, and he seemed to know everything. In the four or five days since he had appeared he had become very useful to Travis.

Frowning, Travis asked, “How many Mexicans, do you think, Ord?”

“Not more than a thousand, now,” the dark-haired, blue-eyed young man said confidently. “But when the main body arrives, there’ll be four, five thousand.”

Travis shook his head. “How do you get all this information, Ord? You recite it like you had read it all some place—like it were history.”

Ord merely smiled. “Oh, I don’t know everything, colonel. That is why I had to come here. There is so much we don’t know about what happened.… I mean, sir, what will happen—in the Alamo.” His sharp eyes grew puzzled for an instant. “And some things don’t seem to match up, somehow—”

Travis looked at him sympathetically. Ord talked queerly at times, and Travis suspected he was a bit deranged. This was understandable, for the man was undoubtedly a Britainer aristocrat, a refugee from Napoleon’s thousand-year Empire. Travis had heard about the detention camps and the charcoal ovens…but once, when he had mentioned the Empereur’s sack of London in ’06, Ord had gotten a very queer look in his eyes, as if he had forgotten completely.

But John Ord, or whatever his name was, seemed to be the only man in the Texas forces who understood what William Barrett Travis was trying to do. Now Travis looked around at the thick adobe wall surrounding the old mission in which they stood. In the cold, yellowish twilight even the flaring cook fires of his hundred and eighty-two men could not dispel the ghostly air that clung to the old place. Travis shivered involuntarily. But the walls were thick, and they could turn one-pounders. He asked, “What was it you called this place, Ord…the Mexican name?”

“The Alamo, sir.” A slow, steady excitement seemed to burn in the Britainer’s bright eyes. “Santa Anna won’t forget that name, you can be sure. You’ll want to talk to the other officers now, sir? About the message we drew up for Sam Houston?”

“Yes, of course,” Travis said absently. He watched Ord head for the walls. No doubt about it, Ord understood what William Barrett Travis was trying to do here. So few of the others seemed to care.

Travis was suddenly very glad that John Ord had shown up when he did.

On the walls, Ord found the man he sought, broad-shouldered and tall in a fancy Mexican jacket. “The commandant’s compliments, sir, and he desires your presence in the chapel.”

The big man put away the knife with which he had been whittling. The switchblade snicked back and disappeared into a side pocket of the jacket, while Ord watched it with fascinated eyes. “What’s old Bill got his britches hot about this time?” the big man asked.

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” Ord said stiffly and moved on.

Bang-bang-bang roared the small Mexican cannon from across the river. Pow-pow-pow! The little balls only chipped dust from the thick adobe walls. Ord smiled.

He found the second man he sought, a lean man with a weathered face, leaning against a wall and chewing tobacco. This man wore a long, fringed, leather lounge jacket, and he carried a guitar slung beside his Rock Island rifle. He squinted up at Ord. “I know…I know,” he muttered. “Willy Travis is in an uproar again. You reckon that colonel’s commission that Congress up in Washington-on-the-Brazos give him swelled his head?”

Rather stiffly, Ord said, “Colonel, the commandant desires an officers’ conference in the chapel, now.” Ord was somewhat annoyed. He had not realized he would find these Americans so—distasteful. Hardly preferable to Mexicans, really. Not at all as he had imagined.

For an instant he wished he had chosen Drake and the Armada instead of this pack of ruffians—but no, he had never been able to stand sea sickness. He couldn’t have taken the Channel, not even for five minutes.

And there was no changing now. He had chosen this place and time carefully, at great expense—actually, at great risk, for the X-4-A had aborted twice, and he had had a hard time bringing her in. But it had got him here at last. And, because for a historian he had always been an impetuous and daring man, he grinned now, thinking of the glory that was to come. And he was a participant—much better than a ringside seat! Only he would have to be careful, at the last, to slip away.

John Ord knew very well how this coming battle had ended, back here in 1836.

He marched back to William Barrett Travis, clicked heels smartly. Travis’ eyes glowed; he was the only senior officer here who loved military punctilio. “Sir, they are on the way.”

“Thank you, Ord,” Travis hesitated a moment. “Look, Ord. There will be a battle, as we know. I know so little about you. If something should happen to you, is there anyone to write? Across the water?”

Ord grinned. “No, sir. I’m afraid my ancestor wouldn’t understand.”

Travis shrugged. Who was he to say that Ord was crazy? In this day and age, any man with vision was looked on as mad. Sometimes he felt closer to Ord than to the others.

* * * *

The two officers Ord had summoned entered the chapel. The big man in the Mexican jacket tried to dominate the wood table at which they sat. He towered over the slender, nervous Travis, but the commandant, straight-backed and arrogant, did not give an inch. “Boys, you know Santa Anna has invested us. We’ve been fired on all day—” He seemed to be listening for something. Wham! Outside, a cannon split the dusk with flame and sound as it fired from the walls. “There is my answer!”

The man in the lounge coat shrugged. “What I want to know is what our orders are. What does old Sam say? Sam and me were in Congress once. Sam’s got good sense; he can smell the way the wind’s blowin’.” He stopped speaking and hit his guitar a few licks. He winked across the table at the officer in the Mexican jacket who took out his knife. “Eh, Jim?”

“Right,” Jim said. “Sam’s a good man, although I don’t think he ever met a payroll.”

“General Houston’s leaving it up to me,” Travis told them.

“Well, that’s that,” Jim said unhappily. “So what you figurin’ to do, Bill?”

Travis stood up in the weak, flickering candlelight, one hand on the polished hilt of his saber. The other two men winced, watching him. “Gentlemen, Houston’s trying to pull his militia together while he falls back. You know, Texas was woefully unprepared for a contest at arms. The general’s idea is to draw Santa Anna as far into Texas as he can, then hit him when he’s extended, at the right place, and right time. But Houston needs more time—Santa Anna’s moved faster than any of us anticipated. Unless we can stop the Mexican Army and take a little steam out of them, General Houston’s in trouble.”

Jim flicked the knife blade in and out. “Go on.”

“This is where we come in, gentlemen. Santa Anna can’t leave a force of one hundred eighty men in his rear. If we hold fast, he must attack us. But he has no siege equipment, not even large field cannon.” Travis’ eye gleamed. “Think of it, boys! He’ll have to mount a frontal attack, against protected American riflemen. Ord, couldn’t your Englishers tell him a few things about that!”

“Whoa, now,” Jim barked. “Billy, anybody tell you there’s maybe four or five thousand Mexicaners comin’?”

“Let them come. Less will leave!”

But Jim, sour-faced turned to the other man. “Davey? You got something to say?”

“Hell, yes. How do we get out, after we done pinned Santa Anna down? You thought of that, Billy boy?”

Travis shrugged. “There is an element of grave risk, of course. Ord, where’s the document, the message you wrote up for me? Ah, thank you.” Travis cleared his throat. “Here’s what I’m sending on to general Houston.” He read, “Commandancy of the Alamo, February 24, 1836…are you sure of that date, Ord?”

“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Ord said.

“Never mind—if you’re wrong we can change it later. ‘To the People of Texas and all Americans in the World. Fellow Freemen and Compatriots! I am besieged with a thousand or more Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment for many hours but have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison is to be put to the sword, if taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly over the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character—” He paused, frowning, “This language seems pretty old-fashioned, Ord—”

“Oh, no, sir. That’s exactly right,” Ord murmured.

“‘…To come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due his honor or that of his homeland. VICTORY OR DEATH!’”

* * * *

Travis stopped reading, looked up. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Ord breathed. “The greatest words of defiance ever written in the English tongue—and so much more literate than that chap at Bascogne.”

“You mean to send that?” Jim gasped.

The man called Davey was holding his head in his hands.

“You object, Colonel Bowie?” Travis asked icily.

“Oh, cut that ‘colonel’ stuff, Bill,” Bowie said. “It’s only a National Guard title, and I like ‘Jim’ better, even though I am a pretty important man. Damn right I have an objection! Why, that message is almost aggressive. You’d think we wanted to fight Santa Anna! You want us to be marked down as warmongers? It’ll give us trouble when we get to the negotiation table—”

Travis’ head turned. “Colonel Crockett?”

“What Jim says goes for me, too. And this: I’d change that part about all Americans, et cetera. You don’t want anybody to think we think we’re better than the Mexicans. After all, Americans are a minority in the world. Why not make it ‘all men who love security?’ That’d have world-wide appeal—”

“Oh, Crockett,” Travis hissed.

Crockett stood up. “Don’t use that tone of voice to me, Billy Travis! That piece of paper you got don’t make you no better’n us. I ran for Congress twice, and won. I know what the people want—”

“What the people want doesn’t mean a damn right now,” Travis said harshly. “Don’t you realize the tyrant is at the gates?”

Crockett rolled his eyes heavenward. “Never thought I’d hear a good American say that! Billy, you’ll never run for office—”

Bowie held up a hand, cutting into Crockett’s talk. “All right, Davey. Hold up. You ain’t runnin’ for Congress now. Bill, the main thing I don’t like in your whole message is that part about victory or death. That’s got to go. Don’t ask us to sell that to the troops!”

Travis closed his eyes briefly. “Boys, listen. We don’t have to tell the men about this. They don’t need to know the real story until it’s too late for them to get out. And then we shall cover ourselves with such glory that none of us shall ever be forgotten. Americans are the best fighters in the world when they are trapped. They teach this in the Foot School back on the Chatahoochee. And if we die, to die for one’s country is sweet—”

“Hell with that,” Crockett drawled. “I don’t mind dyin’, but not for these big landowners like Jim Bowie here. I just been thinkin’—I don’t own nothing in Texas.”

“I resent that,” Bowie shouted. “You know very well I volunteered, after I sent my wife off to Acapulco to be with her family.” With an effort, he calmed himself. “Look, Travis. I have some reputation as a fighting man—you know I lived through the gang wars back home. It’s obvious this Alamo place is indefensible, even if we had a thousand men.”

“But we must delay Santa Anna at all costs—”

Bowie took out a fine, dark Mexican cigar and whittled at it with his blade. Then he lit it, saying around it, “All right, let’s all calm down. Nothing a group of good men can’t settle around a table. Now listen. I got in with this revolution at first because I thought old Emperor Iturbide would listen to reason and lower taxes. But nothin’s worked out, because hot-heads like you, Travis, queered the deal. All this yammerin’ about liberty! Mexico is a Republic, under an Emperor, not some kind of democracy, and we can’t change that. Let’s talk some sense before it’s too late. We’re all too old and too smart to be wavin’ the flag like it’s the Fourth of July. Sooner or later, we’re goin’ to have to sit down and talk with the Mexicans. And like Davey said, I own a million hectares, and I’ve always paid minimum wage, and my wife’s folks are way up there in the Imperial Government of the Republic of Mexico. That means I got influence in all the votin’ groups, includin’ the American Immigrant, since I’m a minority group member myself. I think I can talk to Santa Anna, and even to old Iturbide. If we sign a treaty now with Santa Anna, acknowledge the law of the land, I think our lives and property rights will be respected—” He cocked an eye toward Crockett.

“Makes sense, Jim. That’s the way we do it in Congress. Compromise, everybody happy. We never allowed ourselves to be led nowhere we didn’t want to go, I can tell you! And Bill, you got to admit that we’re in better bargaining position if we’re out in the open, than if old Santa Anna’s got us penned up in this old Alamo.”

“Ord,” Travis said despairingly. “Ord, you understand. Help me! Make them listen!”

* * * *

Ord moved into the candlelight, his lean face sweating. “Gentlemen, this is all wrong! It doesn’t happen this way—”

Crockett sneered, “Who asked you, Ord? I’ll bet you ain’t even got a poll tax!”

Decisively, Bowie said, “We’re free men, Travis, and we won’t be led around like cattle. How about it, Davey? Think you could handle the rear guard, if we try to move out of here?”

“Hell, yes! Just so we’re movin’!”

“O.K. Put it to a vote of the men outside. Do we stay, and maybe get croaked, or do we fall back and conserve our strength until we need it? Take care of it, eh, Davey?”

Crockett picked up his guitar and went outside.

Travis roared, “This is insubordination! Treason!” He drew his saber, but Bowie took it from him and broke it in two. Then the big man pulled his knife.

“Stay back, Ord. The Alamo isn’t worth the bones of a Britainer, either.”

“Colonel Bowie, please,” Ord cried. “You don’t understand! You must defend the Alamo! This is the turning point in the winning of the west! If Houston is beaten, Texas will never join the Union! There will be no Mexican War. No California, no nation stretching from sea to shining sea! This is the Americans’ manifest destiny. You are the hope of the future…you will save the world from Hitler, from Bolshevism—”

“Crazy as a hoot owl,” Bowie said sadly. “Ord, you and Travis got to look at it both ways. We ain’t all in the right in this war—we Americans got our faults, too.”

“But you are free men,” Ord whispered. “Vulgar, opinionated, brutal—but free! You are still better than any breed who kneels to tyranny—”

Crockett came in. “O.K., Jim.”

“How’d it go?”

“Fifty-one percent for hightailin’ it right now.”

Bowie smiled. “That’s a flat majority. Let’s make tracks.”

“Comin’, Bill?” Crockett asked. “You’re O.K., but you just don’t know how to be one of the boys. You got to learn that no dog is better’n any other.”

“No,” Travis croaked hoarsely. “I stay. Stay or go, we shall all die like dogs, anyway. Boys, for the last time! Don’t reveal our weakness to the enemy—”

“What weakness? We’re stronger than them. Americans could whip the Mexicans any day, if we wanted to. But the thing to do is make ’em talk, not fight. So long, Bill.”

The two big men stepped outside. In the night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs as the Texans mounted and rode. From across the river came a brief spatter of musket fire, then silence. In the dark, there had been no difficulty in breaking through the Mexican lines.

Inside the chapel, John Ord’s mouth hung slackly. He muttered, “Am I insane? It didn’t happen this way—it couldn’t! The books can’t be that wrong—”

In the candlelight, Travis hung his head. “We tried, John. Perhaps it was a forlorn hope at best. Even if we had defeated Santa Anna, or delayed him, I do not think the Indian Nations would have let Houston get help from the United States.”

Ord continued his dazed muttering, hardly hearing.

“We need a contiguous frontier with Texas,” Travis continued slowly, just above a whisper. “But we Americans have never broken a treaty with the Indians, and pray God we never shall. We aren’t like the Mexicans, always pushing, always grabbing off New Mexico, Arizona, California. We aren’t colonial oppressors, thank God! No, it wouldn’t have worked out, even if we American immigrants had secured our rights in Texas—” He lifted a short, heavy, percussion pistol in his hand and cocked it. “I hate to say it, but perhaps if we hadn’t taken Payne and Jefferson so seriously—if we could only have paid lip service, and done what we really wanted to do, in our hearts…no matter. I won’t live to see our final disgrace.”

He put the pistol to his head and blew out his brains.

* * * *

Ord was still gibbering when the Mexican cavalry stormed into the old mission, pulling down the flag and seizing him, dragging him before the resplendent little general in green and gold.

Since he was the only prisoner, Santa Anna questioned Ord carefully. When the sharp point of a bayonet had been thrust half an inch into his stomach, the Britainer seemed to come around. When he started speaking, and the Mexicans realized he was English, it went better with him. Ord was obviously mad, it seemed to Santa Anna, but since he spoke English and seemed educated, he could be useful. Santa Anna didn’t mind the raving; he understood all about Napoleon’s detention camps and what they had done to Britainers over there. In fact, Santa Anna was thinking of setting up a couple of those camps himself. When they had milked Ord dry, they threw him on a horse and took him along.

Thus John Ord had an excellent view of the battlefield when Santa Anna’s cannon broke the American lines south of the Trinity. Unable to get his men across to safety, Sam Houston died leading the last, desperate charge against the Mexican regulars. After that, the American survivors were too tired to run from the cavalry that pinned them against the flooding river. Most of them died there. Santa Anna expressed complete indifference to what happened to the Texans’ women and children.

Mexican soldiers found Jim Bowie hiding in a hut, wearing a plain linen tunic and pretending to be a civilian. They would not have discovered his identity had not some of the Texan women cried out, “Colonel Bowie—Colonel Bowie!” as he was led into the Mexican camp.

He was hauled before Santa Anna, and Ord was summoned to watch. “Well, don Jaime,” Santa Anna remarked, “You have been a foolish man. I promised your wife’s uncle to send you to Acapulco safely, though of course your lands are forfeit. You understand we must have lands for the veterans’ program when this campaign is over—” Santa Anna smiled then. “Besides, since Ord here has told me how instrumental you were in the abandonment of the Alamo, I think the Emperor will agree to mercy in your case. You know, don Jaime, your compatriots had me worried back there. The Alamo might have been a tough nut to crack…pues, no matter.”

And since Santa Anna had always been broadminded, not objecting to light skin or immigrant background, he invited Bowie to dinner that night.

* * * *

Santa Anna turned to Ord. “But if we could catch this rascally war criminal, Crockett…however, I fear he has escaped us. He slipped over the river with a fake passport, and the Indians have interned him.”

“Sí, Señor Presidente,” Ord said dully.

“Please, don’t call me that,” Santa Anna cried, looking around. “True, many of us officers have political ambitions, but Emperor Iturbide is old and vain. It could mean my head—”

Suddenly, Ord’s head was erect, and the old, clear light was in his blue eyes. “Now I understand!” he shouted. “I thought Travis was raving back there, before he shot himself—and your talk of the Emperor! American respect for Indian rights! Jeffersonian form of government! Oh, those ponces who peddled me that X-4-A—the track jumper! I’m not back in my own past. I’ve jumped the time track—I’m back in a screaming alternate!”

“Please, not so loud, Señor Ord,” Santa Anna sighed. “Now, we must shoot a few more American officers, of course. I regret this, you understand, and I shall no doubt be much criticized in French Canada and Russia, where there are still civilized values. But we must establish the Republic of the Empire once and for all upon this continent, that aristocratic tyranny shall not perish from the earth. Of course, as an Englishman, you understand perfectly, Señor Ord.”

“Of course, excellency,” Ord said.

“There are soft hearts—soft heads, I say—in Mexico who cry for civil rights for the Americans. But I must make sure that Mexican dominance is never again threatened north of the Rio Grande.”

“Seguro, excellency,” Ord said, suddenly. If the bloody X-4-A had jumped the track, there was no getting back, none at all. He was stuck here. Ord’s blue eyes narrowed. “After all, it…it is manifest destiny that the Latin peoples of North America meet at the center of the continent. Canada and Mexico shall share the Mississippi.”

Santa Anna’s dark eyes glowed. “You say what I have often thought. You are a man of vision, and much sense. You realize the Indios must go, whether they were here first or not. I think I will make you my secretary, with the rank of captain.”

“Gracias, Excellency.”

“Now, let us write my communique to the capital, Capitán Ord. We must describe how the American abandonment of the Alamo allowed me to press the traitor Houston so closely he had no chance to maneuver his men into the trap he sought. Ay, Capitán, it is a cardinal principle of the Anglo-Saxons, to get themselves into a trap from which they must fight their way out. This I never let them do, which is why I succeed where others fail…you said something, Capitán?”

“Sí, Excellency. I said, I shall title our communique: ‘Remember the Alamo,’” Ord said, standing at attention.

“Bueno! You have a gift for words. Indeed, if ever we feel the gringos are too much for us, your words shall once again remind us of the truth!” Santa Anna smiled. “I think I shall make you a major. You have indeed coined a phrase which shall live in history forever!”

GUN FOR HIRE, by Mack Reynolds

Originally published in Analog, December 1960.

Joe Prantera called softly, “Al.” The pleasurable, comfortable, warm feeling began spreading over him, the way it always did.

The older man stopped and squinted, but not suspiciously, even now.

The evening was dark, it was unlikely that the other even saw the circle of steel that was the mouth of the shotgun barrel, now resting on the car’s window ledge.

“Who’s it?” he growled.

Joe Prantera said softly, “Big Louis sent me, Al.”

And he pressed the trigger.

And at that moment, the universe caved inward upon Joseph Marie Prantera.

There was nausea and nausea upon nausea.

There was a falling through all space and through all time. There was doubling and twisting and twitching of every muscle and nerve.

There was pain, horror and tumultuous fear.

And he came out of it as quickly and completely as he’d gone in.

He was in, he thought, a hospital and his first reaction was to think, This here California. Everything different. Then his second thought was Something went wrong. Big Louis, he ain’t going to like this.

He brought his thinking to the present. So far as he could remember, he hadn’t completely pulled the trigger. That at least meant that whatever the rap was it wouldn’t be too tough. With luck, the syndicate would get him off with a couple of years at Quentin.

A door slid open in the wall in a way that Joe had never seen a door operate before. This here California.

The clothes on the newcomer were wrong, too. For the first time, Joe Prantera began to sense an alienness—a something that was awfully wrong.

The other spoke precisely and slowly, the way a highly educated man speaks a language which he reads and writes fluently but has little occasion to practice vocally. “You have recovered?”

Joe Prantera looked at the other expressionlessly. Maybe the old duck was one of these foreign doctors, like.

The newcomer said, “You have undoubtedly been through a most harrowing experience. If you have any untoward symptoms, possibly I could be of assistance.”

Joe couldn’t figure out how he stood. For one thing, there should have been some kind of police guard.

The other said, “Perhaps a bit of stimulant?”

Joe said flatly, “I wanta lawyer.”

The newcomer frowned at him. “A lawyer?”

“I’m not sayin’ nothin’. Not until I get a mouthpiece.”

The newcomer started off on another tack. “My name is Lawrence Reston-Farrell. If I am not mistaken, you are Joseph Salviati-Prantera.”

Salviati happened to be Joe’s mother’s maiden name. But it was unlikely this character could have known that. Joe had been born in Naples and his mother had died in childbirth. His father hadn’t brought him to the States until the age of five and by that time he had a stepmother.

“I wanta mouthpiece,” Joe said flatly, “or let me outta here.”

Lawrence Reston-Farrell said, “You are not being constrained. There are clothes for you in the closet there.”

Joe gingerly tried swinging his feet to the floor and sitting up, while the other stood watching him, strangely. He came to his feet. With the exception of a faint nausea, which brought back memories of that extreme condition he’d suffered during…during what? He hadn’t the vaguest idea of what had happened.

He was dressed in a hospital-type nightgown. He looked down at it and snorted and made his way over to the closet. It opened on his approach, the door sliding back into the wall in much the same manner as the room’s door had opened for Reston-Farrell.

Joe Prantera scowled and said, “These ain’t my clothes.”

“No, I am afraid not.”

“You think I’d be seen dead wearing this stuff? What is this, some religious crackpot hospital?”

Reston-Farrell said, “I am afraid, Mr. Salviati-Prantera, that these are the only garments available. I suggest you look out the window there.”

Joe gave him a long, chill look and then stepped to the window. He couldn’t figure the other. Unless he was a fruitcake. Maybe he was in some kind of pressure cooker and this was one of the fruitcakes.

He looked out, however, not on the lawns and walks of a sanitarium but upon a wide boulevard of what was obviously a populous city.

And for a moment again, Joe Prantera felt the depths of nausea.

This was not his world.

He stared for a long, long moment. The cars didn’t even have wheels, he noted dully. He turned slowly and faced the older man.

Reston-Farrell said compassionately, “Try this, it’s excellent cognac.”

Joe Prantera stared at him, said finally, flatly, “What’s it all about?”

The other put down the unaccepted glass. “We were afraid first realization would be a shock to you,” he said. “My colleague is in the adjoining room. We will be glad to explain to you if you will join us there.”

“I wanta get out of here,” Joe said.

“Where would you go?”

The fear of police, of Al Rossi’s vengeance, of the measures that might be taken by Big Louis on his failure, were now far away.

Reston-Farrell had approached the door by which he had entered and it reopened for him. He went through it without looking back.

There was nothing else to do. Joe dressed, then followed him.

* * * *

In the adjoining room was a circular table that would have accommodated a dozen persons. Two were seated there now, papers, books and soiled coffee cups before them. There had evidently been a long wait.

Reston-Farrell, the one Joe had already met, was tall and drawn of face and with a chainsmoker’s nervousness. The other was heavier and more at ease. They were both, Joe estimated, somewhere in their middle fifties. They both looked like docs. He wondered, all over again, if this was some kind of pressure cooker.

But that didn’t explain the view from the window.

Reston-Farrell said, “May I present my colleague, Citizen Warren Brett-James? Warren, this is our guest from…from yesteryear, Mr. Joseph Salviati-Prantera.”

Brett-James nodded to him, friendly, so far as Joe could see. He said gently, “I think it would be Mr. Joseph Prantera, wouldn’t it? The maternal linage was almost universally ignored.” His voice too gave the impression he was speaking a language not usually on his tongue.

Joe took an empty chair, hardly bothering to note its alien qualities. His body seemed to fit into the piece of furniture, as though it had been molded to his order.

Joe said, “I think maybe I’ll take that there drink, Doc.”

Reston-Farrell said, “Of course,” and then something else Joe didn’t get. Whatever the something else was, a slot opened in the middle of the table and a glass, so clear of texture as to be all but invisible, was elevated. It contained possibly three ounces of golden fluid.

Joe didn’t allow himself to think of its means of delivery. He took up the drink and bolted it. He put the glass down and said carefully, “What’s it all about, huh?”

Warren Brett-James said soothingly, “Prepare yourself for somewhat of a shock, Mr. Prantera. You are no longer in Los Angeles—”

“Ya think I’m stupid? I can see that.”

“I was about to say, Los Angeles of 1960. Mr. Prantera, we welcome you to Nuevo Los Angeles.”

“Ta where?”

“To Nuevo Los Angeles and to the year—” Brett-James looked at his companion. “What is the date, Old Calendar?”

“2133,” Reston-Farrell said. “2133 A.D. they would say.”

Joe Prantera looked from one of them to the other, scowling. “What are you guys talking about?”

Warren Brett-James said softly, “Mr. Prantera, you are no longer in the year 1960, you are now in the year 2133.”

He said, uncomprehendingly, “You mean I been, like, unconscious for—” He let the sentence fall away as he realized the impossibility.

Brett-James said gently, “Hardly for one hundred and seventy years, Mr. Prantera.”

Reston-Farrell said, “I am afraid we are confusing you. Briefly, we have transported you, I suppose one might say, from your own era to ours.”

Joe Prantera had never been exposed to the concept of time travel. He had simply never associated with anyone who had ever even remotely considered such an idea. Now he said, “You mean, like, I been asleep all that time?”

“Not exactly,” Brett-James said, frowning.

Reston-Farrell said, “Suffice to say, you are now one hundred and seventy-three years after the last memory you have.”

Joe Prantera’s mind suddenly reverted to those last memories and his eyes narrowed dangerously. He felt suddenly at bay. He said, “Maybe you guys better let me in on what’s this all about.”

Reston-Farrell said, “Mr. Prantera, we have brought you from your era to perform a task for us.”

Joe stared at him, and then at the other. He couldn’t believe he was getting through to them. Or, at least, that they were to him.

Finally he said, “If I get this, you want me to do a job for you.”

“That is correct.”

Joe said, “You guys know the kind of jobs I do?”

“That is correct.”

“Like hell you do. You think I’m stupid? I never even seen you before.” Joe Prantera came abruptly to his feet. “I’m gettin’ outta here.”

For the second time, Reston-Farrell said, “Where would you go, Mr. Prantera?”

Joe glared at him. Then sat down again, as abruptly as he’d arisen.

“Let’s start all over again. I got this straight, you brought me, some screwy way, all the way…here. O.K., I’ll buy that. I seen what it looks like out that window—” The real comprehension was seeping through to him even as he talked. “Everybody I know, Jessie, Tony, the Kid, Big Louis, everybody, they’re dead. Even Big Louis.”

“Yes,” Brett-James said, his voice soft. “They are all dead, Mr. Prantera. Their children are all dead, and their grandchildren.”

The two men of the future said nothing more for long minutes while Joe Prantera’s mind whirled its confusion.

Finally he said, “What’s this bit about you wanting me to give it to some guy.”

“That is why we brought you here, Mr. Prantera. You were…you are, a professional assassin.”

“Hey, wait a minute, now.”

Reston-Farrell went on, ignoring the interruption. “There is small point in denying your calling. Pray remember that at the point when we…transported you, you were about to dispose of a contemporary named Alphonso Annunziata-Rossi. A citizen, I might say, whose demise would probably have caused small dismay to society.”

They had him pegged all right. Joe said, “But why me? Why don’t you get some heavy from now? Somebody knows the ropes these days.”

Brett-James said, “Mr. Prantera, there are no professional assassins in this age, nor have there been for over a century and a half.”

“Well, then do it yourself.” Joe Prantera’s irritation over this whole complicated mess was growing. And already he was beginning to long for the things he knew—for Jessie and Tony and the others, for his favorite bar, for the lasagne down at Papa Giovanni’s. Right now he could have welcomed a calling down at the hands of Big Louis.

Reston-Farrell had come to his feet and walked to one of the large room’s windows. He looked out, as though unseeing. Then, his back turned, he said, “We have tried, but it is simply not in us, Mr. Prantera.”

“You mean you’re yella?”

“No, if by that you mean afraid. It is simply not within us to take the life of a fellow creature—not to speak of a fellow man.”

Joe snapped: “Everything you guys say sounds crazy. Let’s start all over again.”

Brett-James said, “Let me do it, Lawrence.” He turned his eyes to Joe. “Mr. Prantera, in your own era, did you ever consider the future?”

Joe looked at him blankly.

“In your day you were confronted with national and international, problems. Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a millennium ago.”

“Sure, O.K., so we had problems. I know whatcha mean—like wars, and depressions and dictators and like that.”

“Yes, like that,” Brett-James nodded.

The heavy-set man paused a moment. “Yes, like that,” he repeated. “That we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved. Hadn’t they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself. Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated the reasons for international conflict. For that matter,” he added musingly, “we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions? Shortly after your own period, man awoke to the fact that he had achieved to the point where it was possible to produce an abundance for all with a minimum of toil. Overnight, for all practical purposes, the whole world was industrialized, automated. The second industrial revolution was accompanied by revolutionary changes in almost every field, certainly in every science. Dictators? Your ancestors found, Mr. Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle never dreamed of in your own era.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Joe Prantera growled. “So everybody’s got it made. What I wanta know is what’s all this about me giving it ta somebody? If everything’s so great, how come you want me to knock this guy off?”

Reston-Farrell bent forward and thumped his right index finger twice on the table. “The bacterium of hate—a new strain—has found the human race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized us.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

Brett-James took up the ball again. “Mr. Prantera, have you ever heard of Ghengis Khan, of Tamerlane, Alexander, Caesar?”

Joe Prantera scowled at him emptily.

“Or, more likely, of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin?”

“Sure I heard of Hitler and Stalin,” Joe growled. “I ain’t stupid.”

The other nodded. “Such men are unique. They have a drive…a drive to power which exceeds by far the ambitions of the average man. They are genii in their way, Mr. Prantera, genii of evil. Such a genius of evil has appeared on the current scene.”

“Now we’re getting somewheres,” Joe snorted. “So you got a guy what’s a little ambitious, like, eh? And you guys ain’t got the guts to give it to him. O.K. What’s in it for me?”

The two of them frowned, exchanged glances. Reston-Farrell said, “You know, that is one aspect we had not considered.”

Brett-James said to Joe Prantera, “Had we not, ah, taken you at the time we did, do you realize what would have happened?”

“Sure,” Joe grunted. “I woulda let old Al Rossi have it right in the guts, five times. Then I woulda took the plane back to Chi.”

Brett-James was shaking his head. “No. You see, by coincidence, a police squad car was coming down the street just at that moment to arrest Mr. Rossi. You would have been apprehended. As I understand Californian law of the period, your life would have been forfeit, Mr. Prantera.”

Joe winced. It didn’t occur to him to doubt their word.

Reston-Farrell said, “As to reward, Mr. Prantera, we have already told you there is ultra-abundance in this age. Once this task has been performed, we will sponsor your entry into present day society. Competent psychiatric therapy will soon remove your present—”

“Waita minute, now. You figure on gettin’ me candled by some head shrinker, eh? No thanks, Buster. I’m going back to my own—”

Brett-James was shaking his head again. “I am afraid there is no return, Mr. Prantera. Time travel works but in one direction, with the flow of the time stream. There can be no return to your own era.”

Joe Prantera had been rocking with the mental blows he had been assimilating, but this was the final haymaker. He was stuck in this squaresville of a world.

* * * *

Joe Prantera on a job was thorough.

Careful, painstaking, competent.

He spent the first three days of his life in the year 2133 getting the feel of things. Brett-James and Reston-Farrell had been appointed to work with him. Joe didn’t meet any of the others who belonged to the group which had taken the measures to bring him from the past. He didn’t want to meet them. The fewer persons involved, the better.

He stayed in the apartment of Reston-Farrell. Joe had been right, Reston-Farrell was a medical doctor. Brett-James evidently had something to do with the process that had enabled them to bring Joe from the past. Joe didn’t know how they’d done it, and he didn’t care. Joe was a realist. He was here. The thing was to adapt.

There didn’t seem to be any hurry. Once the deal was made, they left it up to him to make the decisions.

They drove him around the town, when he wished to check the traffic arteries. They flew him about the whole vicinity. From the air, Southern California looked much the same as it had in his own time. Oceans, mountains, and to a lesser extent, deserts, are fairly permanent even against man’s corroding efforts.

It was while he was flying with Brett-James on the second day that Joe said, “How about Mexico? Could I make the get to Mexico?”

The physicist looked at him questioningly. “Get?” he said.

Joe Prantera said impatiently, “The getaway. After I give it to this Howard Temple-Tracy guy, I gotta go on the run, don’t I?”

“I see.” Brett-James cleared his throat. “Mexico is no longer a separate nation, Mr. Prantera. All North America has been united into one unit. Today, there are only eight nations in the world.”

“Where’s the nearest?”

“South America.”

“That’s a helluva long way to go on a get.”

“We hadn’t thought of the matter being handled in that manner.”

Joe eyed him in scorn. “Oh, you didn’t, huh? What happens after I give it to this guy? I just sit around and wait for the cops to put the arm on me?”

Brett-James grimaced in amusement. “Mr. Prantera, this will probably be difficult for you to comprehend, but there are no police in this era.”

Joe gaped at him. “No police! What happens if you gotta throw some guy in stir?”

“If I understand your idiom correctly, you mean prison. There are no prisons in this era, Mr. Prantera.”

Joe stared. “No cops, no jails. What stops anybody? What stops anybody from just going into some bank, like, and collecting up all the bread?”

Brett-James cleared his throat. “Mr. Prantera, there are no banks.”

“No banks! You gotta have banks!”

“And no money to put in them. We found it a rather antiquated method of distribution well over a century ago.”

Joe had given up. Now he merely stared.

Brett-James said reasonably, “We found we were devoting as much time to financial matters in all their endless ramifications—including bank robberies—as we were to productive efforts. So we turned to more efficient methods of distribution.”

* * * *

On the fourth day, Joe said, “O.K., let’s get down to facts. Summa the things you guys say don’t stick together so good. Now, first place, where’s this guy Temple-Tracy you want knocked off?”

Reston-Farrell and Brett-James were both present. The three of them sat in the living room of the latter’s apartment, sipping a sparkling wine which seemed to be the prevailing beverage of the day. For Joe’s taste it was insipid stuff. Happily, rye was available to those who wanted it.

Reston-Farrell said, “You mean, where does he reside? Why, here in this city.”

“Well, that’s handy, eh?” Joe scratched himself thoughtfully. “You got somebody can finger him for me?”

“Finger him?”

“Look, before I can give it to this guy I gotta know some place where he’ll be at some time. Get it? Like Al Rossi. My finger, he works in Rossi’s house, see? He lets me know every Wednesday night, eight o’clock, Al leaves the house all by hisself. O.K., so I can make plans, like, to give it to him.” Joe Prantera wound it up reasonably. “You gotta have a finger.”

Brett-James said, “Why not just go to Temple-Tracy’s apartment and, ah, dispose of him?”

“Jest walk in, eh? You think I’m stupid? How do I know how many witnesses hangin’ around? How do I know if the guy’s carryin’ heat?”

“Heat?”

“A gun, a gun. Ya think I’m stupid? I come to give it to him and he gives it to me instead.”

Dr. Reston-Farrell said, “Howard Temple-Tracy lives alone. He customarily receives visitors every afternoon, largely potential followers. He is attempting to recruit members to an organization he is forming. It would be quite simple for you to enter his establishment and dispose of him. I assure you, he does not possess weapons.”

Joe was indignant. “Just like that, eh?” he said sarcastically. “Then what happens? How do I get out of the building? Where’s my get car parked? Where do I hide out? Where do I dump the heat?”

“Dump the heat?”

“Get rid of the gun. You want I should get caught with the gun on me? I’d wind up in the gas chamber so quick—”

“See here, Mr. Prantera,” Brett-James said softly. “We no longer have capital punishment, you must realize.”

“O.K. I still don’t wanta get caught. What is the rap these days, huh?” Joe scowled. “You said they didn’t have no jails any more.”

“This is difficult for you to understand, I imagine,” Reston-Farrell told him, “but, you see, we no longer punish people in this era.”

That took a long, unbelieving moment to sink in. “You mean, like, no matter what they do? That’s crazy. Everybody’d be running around giving it to everybody else.”

“The motivation for crime has been removed, Mr. Prantera,” Reston-Farrell attempted to explain. “A person who commits a violence against another is obviously in need of medical care. And, consequently, receives it.”

“You mean, like, if I steal a car or something, they just take me to a doctor?” Joe Prantera was unbelieving.

“Why would anybody wish to steal a car?” Reston-Farrell said easily.

“But if I give it to somebody?”

“You will be turned over to a medical institution. Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy is the last man you will ever kill, Mr. Prantera.”

A chillness was in the belly of Joe Prantera. He said very slowly, very dangerously, “You guys figure on me getting caught, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Brett-James said evenly.

“Well then, figure something else. You think I’m stupid?”

“Mr. Prantera,” Dr. Reston-Farrell said, “there has been as much progress in the field of psychiatry in the past two centuries as there has in any other. Your treatment would be brief and painless, believe me.”

Joe said coldly, “And what happens to you guys? How do you know I won’t rat on you?”

Brett-James said gently, “The moment after you have accomplished your mission, we plan to turn ourselves over to the nearest institution to have determined whether or not we also need therapy.”

“Now I’m beginning to wonder about you guys,” Joe said. “Look, all over again, what’d’ya wanta give it to this guy for?”

The doctor said, “We explained the other day, Mr. Prantera. Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy is a dangerous, atavistic, evil genius. We are afraid for our institutions if his plans are allowed to mature.”

“Well if you got things so good, everybody’s got it made, like, who’d listen to him?”

The doctor nodded at the validity of the question. “Mr. Prantera, Homo sapiens is a unique animal. Physically he matures at approximately the age of thirteen. However, mental maturity and adjustment is often not fully realized until thirty or even more. Indeed, it is sometimes never achieved. Before such maturity is reached, our youth are susceptible to romantic appeal. Nationalism, chauvinism, racism, the supposed glory of the military, all seem romantic to the immature. They rebel at the orderliness of present society. They seek entertainment in excitement. Citizen Temple-Tracy is aware of this and finds his recruits among the young.”

“O.K., so this guy is dangerous. You want him knocked off before he screws everything up. But the way things are, there’s no way of making a get. So you’ll have to get some other patsy. Not me.”

“I am afraid you have no alternative,” Brett-James said gently. “Without us, what will you do? Mr. Prantera, you do not even speak the language.”

“What’d’ya mean? I don’t understand summa the big words you eggheads use, but I get by O.K.”

Brett-James said, “Amer-English is no longer the language spoken by the man in the street, Mr. Prantera. Only students of such subjects any longer speak such tongues as Amer-English, French, Russian or the many others that once confused the race with their limitations as a means of communication.”

“You mean there’s no place in the whole world where they talk American?” Joe demanded, aghast.

* * * *

Dr. Reston-Farrell controlled the car. Joe Prantera sat in the seat next to him and Warren Brett-James sat in the back. Joe had, tucked in his belt, a .45 caliber automatic, once displayed in a museum. It had been more easily procured than the ammunition to fit it, but that problem too had been solved.

The others were nervous, obviously repelled by the very conception of what they had planned.

Inwardly, Joe was amused. Now that they had got in the clutch, the others were on the verge of chickening out. He knew it wouldn’t have taken much for them to cancel the project. It wasn’t any answer though. If they allowed him to call it off today, they’d talk themselves into it again before the week was through.

Besides, already Joe was beginning to feel the comfortable, pleasurable, warm feeling that came to him on occasions like this.

He said, “You’re sure this guy talks American, eh?”

Warren Brett-James said, “Quite sure. He is a student of history.”

“And he won’t think it’s funny I talk American to him, eh?”

“He’ll undoubtedly be intrigued.”

They pulled up before a large apartment building that overlooked the area once known as Wilmington.

Joe was coolly efficient now. He pulled out the automatic, held it down below his knees and threw a shell into the barrel. He eased the hammer down, thumbed on the safety, stuck the weapon back in his belt and beneath the jacketlike garment he wore.

He said, “O.K. See you guys later.” He left them and entered the building.

An elevator—he still wasn’t used to their speed in this era—whooshed him to the penthouse duplex occupied by Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy.

There were two persons in the reception room but they left on Joe’s arrival, without bothering to look at him more than glancingly.

He spotted the screen immediately and went over and stood before it.

The screen lit and revealed a heavy-set, dour of countenance man seated at a desk. He looked into Joe Prantera’s face, scowled and said something.

Joe said, “Joseph Salviati-Prantera to interview Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy.”

The other’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “Indeed,” he said. “In Amer-English?”

Joe nodded.

“Enter,” the other said.

A door had slid open on the other side of the room. Joe walked through it and into what was obviously an office. Citizen Temple-Tracy sat at a desk. There was only one other chair in the room. Joe Prantera ignored it and remained standing.

Citizen Temple-Tracy said, “What can I do for you?”

Joe looked at him for a long, long moment. Then he reached down to his belt and brought forth the .45 automatic. He moistened his lips.

Joe said softly, “You know what this here is?”

Temple-Tracy stared at the weapon. “It’s a handgun, circa, I would say, about 1925 Old Calendar. What in the world are you doing with it?”

Joe said, very slowly, “Chief, in the line you’re in these days you needa heavy around with wunna these. Otherwise, Chief, you’re gunna wind up in some gutter with a lotta holes in you. What I’m doin’, I’m askin’ for a job. You need a good man knows how to handle wunna these, Chief.”

Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy eyed him appraisingly. “Perhaps,” he said, “you are right at that. In the near future, I may well need an assistant knowledgeable in the field of violence. Tell me more about yourself. You surprise me considerably.”

“Sure, Chief. It’s kinda a long story, though. First off, I better tell you you got some bad enemies, Chief. Two guys special, named Brett-James and Doc Reston-Farrell. I think one of the first jobs I’m gunna hafta do for you, Chief, is to give it to those two.”

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 63, by Grendel Briarton

Taken from The Collected Feghoot (1992)

In 3945, Ferdinand Feghoot invented his Para-Time Travel ler, which enabled him to visit legendary and mythological figures in those eras when they might have existed.

He immediately sought out Paul Bunyan, whom he found in the middle para-1800s, busily logging off and draining the Great Dakota Swamp. “Say, am I glad to see you!” boomed Bunyan. “I got a problem, and I know you can help me. But first I’ll show you around.”

They spent the rest of the day inspecting the vast logging camp, and ended up at the gigantic combined bunkhouse and inn Paul had built at the edge of the marsh for his men and hordes of tourists who flooded there. Proudly, he displayed his ingenious system of conduits for pressurizing the upper stories, the mile-wide sheet of metal he used as a frying pan, and his gravy vats—each over a hundred yards in diameter.

“And right there’s my problem,” he announced gloomily, pointing at thousands of strange stick-like creatures flitting over the vats. “I had to figure out how to keep stirring the gravy so’s to keep it from burning, so I crossed canoe paddles with dragonflies and trained the young ’uns to fly like you see. Now everyone wants to know what I call ’em and I just can’t think of a name folks’ll remember. Feghoot, can you?”

“Marsh In Flying Sauce Oars,” said Ferdinand Feghoot.

With thanks to Richard Olcott.

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The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series

THE CHILDREN’S ROOM, by Raymond F. Jones

SIDETRACK IN TIME, by William P. McGivern

GEORGE ALL THE WAY, by Richard Wilson

ABSOLUTELY NO PARADOX, by Lester del Rey

THE HOHOKAM DIG, by Theodore Pratt

GUARANTEED TENURE, by H.B. Fyfe

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 42, by Grendel Briarton

NEVER GO BACK, by Charles V. de Vet

THE ANCESTRAL THREAD, by Emil Petaja

THE SONS OF JAPHETH, by Richard Wilson

MEDDLER, by Philip K. Dick

THE MAN WHO LIKED LIONS, by John Bernard Daley

FLAME FOR THE FUTURE, by William P. McGivern

DINOSAUR GOES HOLLYWOOD, by Emil Petaja

TIME OUT FOR TOMORROW, by Richard Wilson

REMEMBER THE ALAMO! by R. R. Fehrenbach

GUN FOR HIRE, by Mack Reynolds

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 63, by Grendel Briarton