Collected Short Fiction, page 298
“Those two discoveries—driving power and reactive medium—made the Chronion possible. For two years I worked on it desperately. Designed only for travel in time—not for a fighting machine—it was finished in June, 1960.
“At once, from my lonely laboratory in the Colorado Rockies, I set out for Gyronchi.” The rasping whisper fell raw-edged, bitter. “Fool, blind with passion, I hoped to reach Sorainya and share her throne!”
A spasm of agony racked the white, tortured face.
VII.
THE GASPING whisper paused. The old man limped swiftly about the dome, reading dials and gauges. His gnarled, scarred hands deftly set controls, moved the shining wheel. Aware of the soft, steady thrum of the atomic converters beneath, Lanning realized that the Chronion was moving again, through the blue flickering chasm. On another incredible flight through Time?
Wil McLan at last looked back to him, with hollow, haunted eyes.
“I went alone,” resumed the painful rasp. “The Chronion, with all her millions of horsepower, could not have drawn a crew of sound men from their places in Time. Even alone, I had difficulty. An overloaded field coil burned out. The laboratory caught fire, and I was badly injured. The very accident, however, so weakened my future geodesics that the converters could pull me away. And, at the very instant the burning building collapsed, the Cronion broke free into the time-stream.”
The dark, smouldering eyes stared away into the shimmering abyss beyond the crystal dome. The old man shuddered.
“You have seen Gyronchi, in the chronoscope.” The husky whisper was slow and faint. “And one look at my body can tell you enough of what reception I had from Sorainya, when at last I came to her red citadel.”
The lean, white-wealed face went hard again with agony and hate. Great tears burst suddenly from the sunken eyes. The broken, bloodless claws of hands came up again, unconsciously, to the bright enigma of the tiny silver tube. Lanning looked quickly away, until the hoarse whisper went on:
“Excuse my self-pity, Denny. I shall spare you the details of Sorainya’s treachery. But, the instant her smiling greeting had lured me from the deck of the Chronion, she commanded her warrior ants to seize me. She mocked my audacity in desiring the queen of Gyronchi, and then demanded that I surrender the secrets of the ship.
“When I refused, she threw me into the dungeons beneath her fortress, and turned the Chronion over to the priests of the gyrane.” The whisper had become a dry, terrible sob. “For ten years, in her torture vaults, Sorainya tried to make me talk. And the priests studied the ship——
“It was Lethonee who set me free,” whispered the shattered man. “You have seen Lethonee.”
A little tremor of eagerness and dread ran over Dennis Lanning. He tried to speak, made a little gulping sound, and nodded. Listening eagerly, he waited. “She came to me in Sorainya’s dungeons,” softly whispered Wil McLan. “She was white and beautiful, holding in her two hands the jewel of her chronotron—that is another geodesic tracer, similar in principle to my chronoscope.
“Lethonee forgave the unwitting injury my experiment had done Jonbar. She planned my escape. She searched Time for the hour when the disposition of the guarding ants would make it possible. She examined the locks, and brought me measurements of the keys.
I carved them from the bones of a previous occupant of that cell.
“WHEN THE chosen night came, she guided me out of the dungeons, across the body of a drunken, sleeping ant. Sorainya had that beast roasted alive when the escape was discovered. Lethonee picked out a safe way for me down the cliff, and across Gyronchi to the black temple.
“Glarath and his priests had carried the Chronion there. Apparently they had dismantled and re-assembled all the mechanism. Perhaps they had not understood it completely, however, for they had not ventured into Time. But, utilizing the principle of the chronoscope, with power supplied by the gyrane, they had made a golden shell——”
Lanning caught his breath.
“I’ve seen that!” he gasped. “Carrying Sorainya!”
“Or the projected image of Sorainya,” corrected Wil McLan. “But Lethonee guided me into the temple.” His whispered narrative went on. “The alarm was spread. The pursuing ants roused the priests.
“With seconds to spare, I got safely aboard the Chronion, started the converters, and escaped into Time. I returned to the early twentieth century. And then at last, guided by Lethonee down the fainter geodesics of her possible world, I came to Jonbar.”
“Jonbar——” Lanning interrupted again, with a quick gesture at the crystal block of the chronoscope. “Can we see Jonbar, in that? And—Lethonee?”
Very gravely, Wil McLan shook his white, haggard head.
“Presently, we shall try,” he whispered. “But the probability factor of Jonbar has become so small that I can reach it only with the utmost power of the scanning beam, and then the definition is very poor. Jonbar is at the brink of doom.”
His broken fingers touched the thin white cylinder that hung from his throat.
“But there is still one chance.” A stern light flashed in his dark sunken eyes. “Jonbar hasn’t given up. It was Lethonee’s father, an archeologist digging in the Rockies where my laboratory used to be, who found there the charred notebooks and age-rusted mechanisms from which he rediscovered the secret of time.
“He constructed the chronotron; and, with it, Lethonee soon discovered the menace born of my unwitting tampering with probability. And she brought me to Jonbar to aid the defense. That is why I have been picking up you and your men, Denny.”
Lanning was staring at him, frowning. “But I don’t understand,” he muttered. “What can we do?”
“These two possible worlds—each armed with the secret of Time—are engaged in a desperate struggle for—no, not survival. Perhaps existence, would be better.
“Denny,” the whispering husk of voice grew confused and troubled, “it is almost impossible to explain, or understand. Time involves the fourth dimension, and its fixation and ultimate determination involves the fifth dimensional progression of the continuum. It is as difficult to grasp the inter-weaving actions of the geodesics, as to picture mentally that necessary phenomenon of the fourth dimension; that a body may rotate not around a point, as in two dimensions, nor about a line, as it would in three, but about a plane.
“I have not time now to show you the mathematics of the geodesic interactions. But this is the meaning in practical things: neither Lethonee nor Sorainya is fixed in that fifth dimensional progression. In that sense, neither is yet real. Neither Jonbar nor Gyronchi. Somewhere, there is a turning in the Path of Time that leads, one way, to Jonbar. The other branch leads to Gyronchi.
“THE CRUX of it all is this: If Jonbar exists, Gyronchi cannot. And equally, if Sorainya exists—Lethonee never comes to be. Each of those cities—each of those women—represents a possible future, a possible epoch. And—they represent different possibilities of the same epoch.
“Each has the secret of Time. But neither can, by any means whatever, reach the other! They can see each other—but they cannot reach or affect each other. Those doctors of Jonbar aboard the Chronion—they cannot reach Gyronchi, even though this ship goes down the geodesics that lead there. They cannot—for Gyronchi and Jonbar, and all things of either city are mutually exclusive. Either is possible—but not both!
“Each is possible—but because of my blundering, I know now that the geodesics of Gyronchi are far stronger. The probability of Gyronchi is far greater.”
“But we can help!” Desperately Lanning clutched the thin, old shoulder. “What is our part?”
“No direct geodesics link Jonbar and Gyronchi,” rasped McLan. “Therefore they have no common reality. They are contradictory. They can explore each other’s trains of probability, but there can be no physical contact, remember, because the existence of each is a denial of the other. Their forces, therefore, can never come to grips.
“But our contemporary world is joined by direct geodesics with all possible worlds. It has a common existence with both those possible—but mutually impossible—worlds of futurity. That accounts for your place in the picture, Denny.”
“Eh,” Lanning leaned forward, desperately urgent. “Lethonee and Sorainya both talked of destiny. You can tell me what they meant?”
The blue, haunted eyes looked at him steadily, from beneath that startling shock of snowy hair. “Yours is the key-position, Denny,” the whispering husk responded. “Your triumph alone can save Jonbar. With your failure—it fails.”
“And that’s why they both came to me!”
The old man nodded. “Sorainya sought to cause your death in a way we could not restore. The life-giving powers of dynat are great—but we could not restore life to bomb-shattered flesh, or to a shark-torn body. And that type of destruction would insure her victory. Had you, instead of Barry, flown that day, the plane would have exploded. Lethonee took it upon herself to watch over you, until such a time as Fate ruled your death in a way we could restore. Then we could take you aboard the Chronion. And only then.”
“Death——” Lanning whispered echo. “Then we are a Legion of the Dead.”
“I came back to find you and a band of your contemporaries to serve Jonbar,” McLan whispered gravely. “Since it is impossible to draw a sound, living man from his place in Time—to do so would warp the whole continuum—we had to wait until the moment when each of you was actually dead to draw you aboard through the temporal ray.
“THERE ARE two civilizations for the future, and while neither yet exists to us, each exists to its inhabitants. For in the fifth dimensional view, all things are co-existent, some more fixed than others. Like the exposed film of a camera, wherein the images already are. Part of the long scroll of film—Time—has passed into the fixing bath of the fifth dimensional progression, and may not be changed. Part—that we call the future—has not, and the film is yet sensitive to change.
“But to those future beings, their yet-to-be civilization is real. And—they are fighting for it. But to do so they must fight through us, they must reach us and influence us. Those two futures must fight over a modern, since they cannot fight each other.”
“And—we are the dead!” whispered Lanning.
“Not dead now,” the husked whisper of the old man came. “Jonbar has provided the corps of surgeons and doctors to revive you immediately as the temporal ray drew you aboard the Chronion. The dynat can revive any reasonably whole man.”
“Dynat?” Lanning caught at the term. “I heard Lethonee use that word, and the doctors. What does it mean?”
“It is the vital scientific power upon which the whole civilization of Jonbar is based,” said McLan. “The slow evolutionary adaptation to the use of its illimitable power is what will give birth to the dynon, the perfect race that may exist—if you win for Jonbar!
“The dynat is as important to Jonbar as the gyrane is to the Gyronchi. But there’s no time for that. I’ve explained the situation, Denny. What about it?”
The dark, hollow eyes searched his face with a probing keenness almost painful. Wil McLan thrust his white head forward. The hoarse whisper rasped, desperately: “Will you accept the championship of Jonbar—knowing that it is a nearly hopeless battle? Will you set yourself against Sorainya, and give up all that she may have offered? And remember, Denny, an act of yours must kill Sorainya—or Lethonee!”
A COLD shudder passed over Dennis Lanning, and a choking ache closed his throat. The serene white image of Lethonee was before him, holding the jewel. And the proud, red-mailed splendor of Sorainya pushed it away. He couldn’t, he thought, endure the death of Lethonee. But could he—even if he would—destroy Sorainya? An agony crushed his heart, but slowly he nodded. “Yes, Wil,” he said. “I accept.” Broken fingers gripped his hand. “Good for you, Denny,” gasped Wil McLan. “And now I give you command of our Legion of Time.”
“No, Wil,” Lanning protested. “I’ve earned no right to command.”
“Gyronchi must he destroyed—and even Sorainya.” A stern bitter light flashed in the hollow eyes again, and the gnarled fingers touched the worn silver tube. “And I’ll do my part.” The whisper quivered. “But I’ve no knack of leadership. My life has been spent too much with abstractions. But you’re a man of action, Denny, and in the crucial place. You must command.” Lanning met the tortured eyes.
“I will.”
A scarred hand lifted in a salute almost gay.
“Thank you, Denny. Now I suggest that you go down and lay the situation before the men, in the way you think best. They have this choice: to follow your command, or to be returned to where we found them in Time.”
“Which would mean—death?”
Wil McLan nodded. “There is no niche for them in Time—alive. If we win, a place can be made for those who survive, where the fifth-order progression has not yet fixed the continuum—in Jonbar. If we fail, there is death—or Sorainya’s torture vaults.”
“In Jonbar——” repeated Lanning, huskily. “Can I go to Jonbar, if we win? To Lethonee?”
“If we win,” the old man told him. “Now, if you will go down to your men, I’ll try to pick up Jonbar with the chronoscope.”
Eagerly, Lanning asked, “May I——”
A solemn twinkle flashed briefly in McLan’s hollow eyes.
“If I get Lethonee,” he promised, “I’ll call you. But it’s very hard to get Jonbar.”
Lanning went back down through the turret to the deck, and requested Barry Halloran and Lao Meng Shan to call the rest together. Facing the expectant little group, in their oddly assorted uniforms, he began: “I’ve just talked to Wil McLan.” He waited, for the flash of eager interest. “He has gathered us out of Time, saved each one of us from certain death. In return, he wants us to fight, to save one world that is struggling for survival against another. I know the cause is good.
“He has offered me the command. And I must ask you either to follow me, or to be returned to your own place in Time—to die. That may be a hard choice. But it is the only one possible.”
“Hard?” shouted Barry Halloran.
“Nein!” grunted Emil Schorn. “Are we craven, to turn back from Valhalla?”
“Viva!” shouted Cresto. “Viva el capitán!”
“Thank you.” Lanning gulped, blinked. “If we win, there will be a place made for us in Jonbar. Now, if you will follow me, repeat: I pledge loyalty to Jonbar, and I promise to serve dutifully in the Legion of Time.”
The eight men, with right hands lifted, shouted the oath. And then, led by Willie Rand, roared out a cheer for “Jonbar and Cap’n Denny Lanning.”
ONE OF THE orderlies from Jonbar beckoned to Lanning. and he returned hastily to the bridge, his heart thumping.
“Did you—” he asked breathlessly, “did you——?”
Wil McLan shook his haggard head, and pointed to the cabinet of the chronoscope.
“I tried,” he whispered hoarsely. “But the enemy have moved again. One more triumph of Sorainya is fixed on the fifth axis. And Jonbar is one step nearer extinction. The image flickered, and went out. And that is what I got.”
Looking into the crystal block, Lanning once more saw Gyronchi! But it was strangely changed. Sorainya’s proud citadel on the hill had collapsed into a heap of corroded, blackened metal. The black temple of the gyrane, on the other eminence, had fallen to a tremendous mound of shattered stone. Beneath, upon the denuded wastelands where fields and villages had been, was a desolate, untrodden wilderness of weeds and brush, leprously patched with strange scars of white, shining ash.
“Gyronchi?” breathed Lanning. “Destroyed?”
“Destroyed,” rasped Wil McLan, “by its own evil! By a final war between the warlords of Sorainya’s class and the priesthood of the gyrane. Mankind, in the picture you witness, is extinct.”
His hoarse whisper sank very low.
“If we fail—if mankind follows the way of Gyronchi—that is the end of road.” Wearily, he snapped off the switch, and the bleak scene vanished. “And now it seems that that road has been chosen. For the geodesics of no other remain strong enough for the instrument to trace.”
His hands knotted impotently, Lanning stared bewildered and helpless out through the dome, into the haze of flickering blue.
“What—” he demanded, “what could have happened?”
Wil McLan shook his head.
“I don’t know. Gyronchi has done something. We must try to discover what it is, and undo it if possible. We had best return to Jonbar, I think, to secure the use of the new geodesic analysis laboratory that Lethonee has organized—if we can!”
Anxiously, Lanning gripped his thin shoulder.
“If——”
“It may be,” Wil McLan whispered, “that this latest move has so far attenuated the probability of Jonbar that its geodesics will not serve to lead the Chronion. That—we can never again reach it!”
“But we can try,” Lanning snapped with a sudden fierceness.
“Yes, try.” The old man shook his head slowly. The fumbling, broken hands twisted at the shining wheel of the Chronion.
TO BE CONTINUED
The Legion of Time
The second part of a great three-part NEW-CONCEPT Time story by
UP TO NOW:
DEADLY antagonists, two beautiful women haunted Dennis Lanning. He was eighteen, in 1927, when Lethonee first appeared to him in the apartment at Harvard that he shared with three others: Wil McLan, the mathematician; Lao Meng Shan, the Chinese engineer; and Barry Halloran, all-American tackle and his dearest friend.
Tragic with dread, and beautiful, Lethonee’s intangible image came to him alone, holding the great jewel of Time that she called the chronotron. In it she showed him Jonbar, her city, lying far-off in possible futurity. Jonbar’s destiny, she told him, and even her own, were in his hands.
