Time Travel Omnibus, page 148
The thicket on either side disgorged giant men, each with the deadly arrow diskoid strapped to his chest. They swarmed around Bolton, lifted him bodily.
Then Kels went into action. His dynol pistol flamed redly, spraying the group with tiny dynol pellets.
The men of 4800 went down as though a huge scythe had swept their ranks. Bolton, struggling in their midst, cried out in sudden anguish. Kels lowered his weapon, not daring to shoot again for fear of hitting the tour leader. Then he dropped flat, suddenly. Some of the outlaws had faced around, the sun gleaming on the arrow catapults.
A whiz of tiny arrows ruffled his hair with the wind of their flight. Melius and Pennyfeather dived headlong into the thicket and were lost to sight. Kels jerked his pistol around, aimed high, and pressed the trigger. The attackers toppled. Kels sprang to his feet, just in time to hear a crashing among the tall stalks. Bolton was gone, so were his kidnappers; dead and dying littered the place.
Milak rose slowly, blood spurting from a shoulder. His face was terrible in its calm wrath.
“I did not think the discontented ones would slay to attain their ends. What have they done?”
“They have kidnapped John Bolton.”
“To force him to describe the construction of machines, no doubt.”
“But he is not a technician or an engineer,” said Kels. “He could not help them much. Melius or Pennyfeather were their men, if that was their purpose.”
“What are you going to do?” Kels asked.
“Follow them,” the man of 4800 said briefly. “You proceed to the Museum and inform the custodian. He will notify the World Council.”
Kels shook his head in negation.
“Certainly not. I shall accompany you. My weapon,” he stared wryly at the fallen figures of the malcontents, “is rather efficacious, and Bolton—well—he is a man from my own time.”
“Very well,” the other assented, “you may follow.”
They plunged through the thick interlacing blooms, out on the other side where open parkland stretched for half a mile before meeting any obstruction. The kidnappers and their prey had vanished as completely as if the earth had swallowed them.
Milak smiled grimly at Kels’ look of bewilderment.
“They have turned their penetration rays on each other,” he explained. “It is this,” he pointed to the mirror on his breast, the mirror he had used in searching the tourists. “The rays render them semi-transparent; at a distance of fifty feet and in bright sunlight it is almost impossible to see the dim, wavering outlines.”
“Then how shall we trace them?”
Milak went grim. “The World Council has not been idle. We have learned a good bit about their plots. Their Headquarters are known to us; no doubt that is where they are taking Bolton, Come!”
He pushed on rapidly, his giant strides leaving Kels laboring behind. He pulled up at that and adjusted his pace to that of the smaller man. Twenty minutes of fast walking brought them across the level parkland, past the first series of glazed tile buildings. Then Milak stopped. A tiny inconspicuous structure, uncolored, crude in design and workmanship, nestled in a little hollow. The fiat roof was almost level with the surrounding terrain.
“We shall have to adopt the tactics of the enemy,” said Milak. He plunged his hand into his tunic pocket, brought out a penetration mirror similar to the one on his breast. This he affixed to Kels’ left arm. Then he swerved his own to his right arm, so that as they stood side by side the two mirrors faced each other. He leaned over, adjusted a tiny switch on Kels’ mirror, did the same to his own.
Milak suddenly became a thin outlined patch of misty radiance. The arrow catapult was a floating darkness. Kels glanced down at himself and saw that he too was a ghostlike wraith.
“Be sure to keep the mirror turned full on me as we walk,” a voice came startlingly out of thin air. “Otherwise we shall be discovered and the alarm given.”
• TWO faint outlines of mist crept soundlessly over the sod toward the little depression housing the headquarters of the conspirators.
“We could of course wait for help from the Council,” Milak whispered, “but by the time it arrives Bolton may have been tortured into divulging whatever he knows about power machinery. Even sketchy information might be turned to use by the dissidents. They have some extremely able men among them, but unwilling to engage in honest labor.”
Kels said nothing; his mind was busy with the puzzle. Why had Bolton, who knew absolutely nothing about machines, been kidnapped, when Melius—. Ah, there was the rub! Melius had disappeared, he remembered suddenly, and with him, Pennyfeather!
They had come to the edge of the hollow. Kels stared down. The house of the conspirators was a low two-storied affair, the edge of the roof some six feet above them and not more than ten to twelve feet away from where they stood.
“It will be easy for me to jump to the roof,” Milak said. “Can you make it?”
“Yes.” Kels religiously kept himself in good physical trim.
Kels took a few paces back, got himself a good running start, and sprang for his objective. His agile fingers slithered a moment over the smooth edge, gripped, and a heave of his shoulders and upward swing of his legs brought him panting slightly to the roof. Milak and he were plainly visible now; the strapped mirrors on their arms had naturally swerved from their objectives.
Milak clicked the switches. “They have achieved their purpose,” he said. “Follow me.”
Very careful not to make any noise, the man of 4800 and the man of 2124 crept side by side to the farther edge of the roof. Milak peered down, then grasped the edge with powerful hands and swung himself down. Kels followed unhesitatingly.
He found himself on a narrow slippery tiled ledge running completely around the house. A window showed directly in front of him, flush with the wall, and of thick crystal. Kels, pressing close to the wall on his precarious perch, could see no way to open it. But Milak calmly shouldered him to one side, pressed his great chest against the crystal and contracted his muscles.
An arrow flashed out of the catapult with terrific force. There was a tiny rending sound and the missile was through the crystal and had embedded itself in the farther wall of the interior. Milak went about it very methodically. He crouched lower and lower, an inch at a time, and arrow after arrow hurled itself through the thick glass. Then across at the bottom up at the other end, and back again at the top.
Kels caught the great cut oblong of crystal just as it was about to fall. Milak helped him ease it sideways into the room. Then the two men stepped in.
The room was evidently a sleeping quarters for quite a company. Inset beds, something like Pullman berths, lined the walls. Tunics of flaming colors were scattered recklessly over the two couches; other articles of clothing showed the exclusiveness of masculine occupancy.
Milak beckoned Kels with a warning finger. A faint light streamed upward through the floor in the corner to the right. They got down on hands and knees and peered down through a heavy crystal port. An amazing scene disclosed itself to their astonished eyes.
A dozen men of 4800, clad in green and scarlet tunics, were clustered around a slighter figure. The center of commotion was removing his clothes, or having them removed for him, it was hard to tell which. Then the group opened, and John Bolton, naked as the day he was born, his white body gleaming, walked calmly through a hasty lane of gesticulating giants, down to—a pool!
He paused a moment on the rim of a circular basin some ten feet in diameter, set in the floor of the chamber, its greenish liquid placid and inviting.
The men of 4800 mouthed back at him, urged him in with unmistakable gestures.
“Are they crazy?” Milak asked in amazement.
But Kels knew. The whole plot burst upon him in a single dazzling flare. He cursed himself under his breath for an idiot in not anticipating something like this. Cunning; devilishly cunning!
He was on his feet in an instant.
“Milak,” he said rapidly, “we must stop it; stop it at once. Bolton must not enter that pool!”
Eltor Milak stared down at him thoughtfully, then nodded his head. “I do not quite understand, but you are right. There is method in back of these ablutions. Stand on the crystal oval—and be prepared.”
The men below were intent on their naked victim still hesitant at the brim, when a new factor injected itself into the situation. Kels and Milak were on the oval; Milak was reaching out with a gigantic foot to press a knob on the outer encircling floor, when a door beneath slid violently open, and two figures almost tumbled into the midst of the conspirators.
• MILAK’S foot checked in mid air, and Kels exclaimed in exasperation. The two figures recovered their balance, advanced rapidly on the startled malcontents. They waved their arms and shouted soundlessly. Melius and Pennyfeather!
Bolton glanced hastily at them and dived headlong into the pool. At the same time the men of 4800 swerved on the rash pair, catapults gleaming wickedly on their chests.
Melius rumbled something in his throat; his poised foot descended. The crystal oval gave way suddenly beneath them; dropped swiftly into the room below.
The face of Melius was a terrible mask of wrath; Kels crouched grimly on his precarious perch, dynol pistol in hand; tensed for instant action.
The sudden descent of the crystal elevator saved the intruders’ lives. Bodies swerved around, and the arrow flight whizzed harmlessly to one side.
Milak roared out a great forgotten battle shout; the muscles on his mighty chest rippled in lightning movement. Tiny arrows hurtled in unending stream among the disconcerted conspirators. The gun in Kels’ hand flamed deadly dynol pellets.
It was slaughter rather than fair fight. The conspirators had been caught off balance. Before they could recover their wits, only three were left alive in that horrible hail of missiles. Two turned bravely to fight back and were mowed down. The third dashing swiftly through the open door, was lost to view.
Milak stared at the shambles with grave pitying eyes. The battle lust had quit him.
“Fools,” he said. “They have found the slothful ease they sought so long.” Then he turned to the cowering figure of Bolton, half submerged in the green-tinged pool.
“Come out, John Bolton,” he urged graciously. “It is but an ill welcome you received in our time, and a curious one. I wonder—”
But Kels’ sharp eyes had noted the strange darkenings on Bolton’s white skin where the liquid of the pool was acting.
“Quick,” he shouted rapidly to Melius and Pennyfeather, who were staring from behind a sheltering couch with stricken eyes, “pull him out of the water and bundle his clothes on him before he dies of cold.”
The temperature in the room was extremely mild, but Kels’ energy and lightning actions left no opportunity for wonder. He darted forward, leaned over, grabbed the unfortunate Bolton by the shoulders. The man was actually white of face and chattering, as if in confirmation of Kels’ diagnosis.
As Melius and Pennyfeather, wits recovered, assisted him in dragging the tour leader out of the depths, Kels saw configurations, unmistakable in their meaning, forming on shoulders and chest.
He thrust Bolton rudely in the midst of the three men of 2124, hustled him over to where his pile of clothes lay on the floor. Milak, from a distance, watched with puzzled eyes, but Melius was grinning sardonically as he shielded Bolton with his own clad figure. He knew too.
The bewildered Hook’s man was hustled into his clothes like any child. Only when the last item of habiliments hid the damning traceries did Kels breathe a sigh of relief.
“Not a word, you idiot,” he whispered fiercely, “if you wish to remain alive.”
Bolton nodded dumbly.
Milak was thoughtful. “Now why, my friend, did these misguided men of my time kidnap you, and thrust you in a bath? They were men of intelligence, all of them, not given to idle flummeries.”
Kels spoke rapidly, to forestall Bolton. “No doubt they mistook him for Professor Melius here, who could have given extremely valuable information on power machinery. When he denied knowledge of what they desired they must have threatened him with slow drowning to make him yield.”
Not very plausible, Kels reflected, but the best he could invent on the spur of the moment. Milak stared down at him with benign, reflective eyes that held the hint of a twinkle in them. Kels began to feel uncomfortable.
Then the twinkle broadened, and Milak inclined his head gravely. “You have very likely stumbled upon the correct explanation, friend Kels. You had better remove John Bolton to the timedrome, and take him back with you to your own era, before he is again mistaken for another, and subjected to more unnecessary baths.”
They went silently back to the timedrome, escorted by a regiment of grim soldiers of the Council who had come upon the scene just seconds too late. Milak’s word was accepted as final—he was evidently a man of great authority—and there was no difficulty in their re-entering the Time Express. Kels heaved a sigh of relief as the entrance-port slid shut. A thoroughly cowed and frightened batch of tourists were already on board. Three were missing, killed in the earlier melee; some half dozen carried wounds of the encounter. All were anxious to return to their own time as fast as the Express could vibrate.
Bolton, white and red by turns, breathing in gasps, set the switches. The Time Express vibrated into its long backward journey through time.
A man suddenly staggered screaming out of a stateroom in which he had lain hidden. Kels recognized him at once. It was the giant conspirator who had escaped from the house in the last battle. The year 4800 would prove unhealthy for him, and he had taken this desperate step of trying to hurl himself back in time to a haven of safety.
Even as the passengers watched, horror-stricken, his form faded before their eyes; the screams muted down to a thin piping, and the man vanished completely.
A half hour later, Kels was closeted in a tight locked stateroom with a badly shaken Bolton. Melius and Pennyfeather were also present.
“It is your good fortune,” Kels was saying coldly, “that at the last moment a feeling of solidarity with men of my own time awoke within me. I could not turn you over to the justice of 4800, no matter how much you deserved it.”
“It was very simple, and very clever,” Kels explained. “It even fooled me. Bolton simply covered his entire body with complete plans and specifications of fundamental power machinery, together with the necessary mathematical and electrical formulae. He used invisible ink that dried and left no trace. It had all been arranged on his preceding tour. The kidnapping was to get him away from the guard and at the same time to make him appear an innocent party. The bath contained a chemical fluid that brought the configurations into bold relief. The conspirators would have had them copied, the ink then washed off, and Bolton would have returned with some wild goose story to account for his kidnapping.”
Melius nodded sardonically, “I suspected something of the sort. You see, Bolton came to me before the trip, and inveigled all the data and plans out of me on promise of huge future rewards. That is why Pennyfeather, my assistant, and I kept a close watch on him. I always like to know the answer to puzzles. At the pretended kidnapping, we dived into the thicket, and noted the direction the party took before they disappeared into haze. Then we followed and came upon the house in the hollow.”
Kels turned sternly upon Bolton. “Why did you lend yourself to such a dangerous scheme? What benefit could you possibly have deriven to justify it?”
Bolton straightened and shot back. “Gold! Lots of it!” he declared vehemently. “I hate the job I have; I hate mustering old men and retired butter and egg men into the future for interminable years, listening to their confounded twaddle, bearing with all their whims. I wanted leisure, power, luxuries, the right to do as I please. I needed money for that. On my last trip a guard whispered to me, told me what was wanted, promised me what would represent a fortune in gold in my own time. How can you blame me for taking the chance?”
“You unutterable fool,” Kels said slowly. “Didn’t you know; didn’t you yourself as part of your patter to tourists say over and over, that nothing could be taken back in time? The gold, even if you had won through, would have vanished in exactly the same fashion as the man of 4800 who tried to return with us.”
Bolton lifted a haggard despairing face, groaned once, dropped it back into his hands.
Melius grinned sheepishly.
“Don’t be too hard on him. His tour lectures had become so much a matter of rate that he never heard the things he was saying. I myself,” he grinned even more sheepishly, “fell into the same egregious error. I tried to obtain information about the atomic motors in the year 2850 for use in our own time. The atomic engineer at the power house very kindly disabused me.”
Kels nodded absently. He was trying to figure out how he was going to word his report to the World Council of 2124.
THE END
THE END OF TYME
Henry Hasse
• This short humorous satire on time-travel should be most welcome to our readers. For years, our “Readers’ Corner” has been filled with opinions and theories pro and con relative to the possibilities of time-traveling. Even those most opposed to this type of story, should thoroughly enjoy this amusing tale.
But please don’t take our authors’ theme too seriously—especially their opinion of editors in general. Perhaps we would act the same as the editor in this story, if we were faced with a similar situation. Who knows?
• Editor-In-Chief B. Lue Pencill was about to engage in a task—strange as it may seem—which Fate now and then casts inadvertently into the path of every editor; he was going to peruse a manuscript. In view of which fact he would undoubtedly demand an increase of salary.
Seated “editorially”—that is, his feet perched at an angle on his desk, which position scientists assert is conducive to better thinking—he prepared to enjoy the manuscript; which, of course, had practically been accepted already, the author being a very popular one with Future Fiction readers, and something of a scientist besides.
