Time Travel Omnibus, page 186
Accelerated motion. Night and day now were so swiftly succeeding each_ other that they blended into a luminous grey monochrome of twilight. Then in another moment the four seasons themselves were blended. Silent, dead-looking monochrome landscape, queerly lacking in detail so that as I gazed at any one spot only grey blurred blankness seemed there.
“Oh Alan—tell me about it! You forget that I cannot see.”
I tried to describe it.
“What a pity—a girl so beautiful,” I heard Groat say, “always in darkness. You will see presently, my dear.”
The indicators of the Time-dials were all in motion . . . 1956 . . . 1970 . . . 2000 . . . A new century . . .
Again I gazed out through the bull’s-eye. The same blurred landscape of luminous grey. No! There was movement now! Things through the years changing, the sum of their tiny daily movements now becoming visible. I gazed to the south; with a slow crawling movement of blurred grey detail, I could see the rising oncoming city. Towering giants of buildings were blurred against the monochrome of sky. Silently the monstrous grey city engulfed us. We were indoors.
2100 A.D . . . 2200 . . .
New centuries . . . progress . . . For a breath that might have been a hundred years it seemed that we were in some huge amphitheatre, with a vast domed roof high above us. Then the roof was leprous. A catastrophe of nature? An earthquake, or some great storm? Or the ravages of war? Then the roof was gone. Walls again were rising.
2400 A.D . . . I found Groat standing gazing at Dora. “We will be there in a moment. I have set the automatic controls. Come Dora—”
He extended his powerful longfingered hand toward her; but a sudden impulse made me move between them.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll guide her.”
2500 . . . 2520—2530 . . . Then I could count the years . . . Then the months of 2536. And then days of the summer.
OUTSIDE one of the other bull’s eyes a soft steady violet light was visible—the interior of a room in which now our cage was standing. I could see a blurred, nearby wall. The cage was wafting slowly upward a foot or so to take a slightly new position in Space.
Then the automatic controls snapped off. The cage bars went dark. Faint distant sound was audible.
Groat slid the door open. “Come Dora, my child—my home—we are here.”
I held her arm to guide her as we stepped over the vehicle’s threshold into the world of 2536.
It was a long grey apartment, with a vaulted roof from which a soft light was streaming. A heavy piled grey carpet was on the floor; the walls were grey-draped, windowless. Luxurious padded metal furniture stood about. Mechanisms of daily life routine were on a wall instrument panel.
“The place where I was born,” Groat said softly. “You like it?”
Our little garden! Crowded bit of Space, with only Time to hold separate its myriad aspects! And Groat added as I seated Dora in a chair:
“You—my visitors from the barbaric past—” He was smiling so that his thin lips bared his shining white teeth. “I will get the surgeon—Dora must see my home. See—me—”
He made an aerial connection. On a luminous screen the image of a face appeared. A man of ruddy complexion with a shining bald pate. His shoulders disclosed that he was robed in immaculate white.
“Doctor Freane? We need you,” Groat said.
“Oh—you, Xax VI?”
“Yes—Sah Groat—you know me. The Master bids you come—an eye operation—at once—”
Presently a low tinkling bell sounded. The surgeon and two white-robed women entered. They went instantly about their work with Dora—lenses and lights to examine her eyes—surgical instruments. They hardly spoke. But they stared at the time cage, and at me and Dora—to them queer barbaric people of history.
The surgeon, hardly interrupting his work, said abruptly:
“Groat—your Master should not use that cage. You have stopped in the twentieth century—these people are from there, by the look of them.”
“Yes,” Groat agreed.
“But it is forbidden,” the surgeon said. “Your permit is for exploratory time traveling, but never to stop in another Time-world.”
“I am returning these visitors,” Groat said. “It will not occur again.”
“Make your Master understand it, Groat. It is not like Jason XI—himself so great a scientist—to transgress his permit.”
I stood tense, holding Dora’s trembling hand as I watched the operation. Painless, swift and sure. A minute? Five minutes? Then suddenly, as all the apparatus was whisked away, the surgeon plunged the room almost into darkness.
“Now child, open your eyes.” His voice was gentle.
DORA’S eyelids fluttered up. The light! She gasped. Her blueeyed gaze swung toward the sound of my tense, excited breathing.
“Why—why Alan—I see you! Alan dear—”
Civilization marching upward, Progress. Always progress.
For that moment I held the tearful Dora, both of us flooded with thankfulness. The nurses quietly had departed. The surgeon stood beside us. Groat had momentarily gone into the time cage.
And suddenly in the grey restful hush of the dim apartment there came a groan! A low scraping thump! A man groaning in mortal agony!
We stood transfixed. From a dark nearby recess a figure appeared, crawling, hitching itself forward on the padded floor. A man of middle age. Dying. One of his arms and shoulder seemed partly burned away by a searing flash.
He gasped faintly, “You Freane? Help! I am—”
The surgeon swung. I heard him murmur, “By my God—you, Jason—”
“I am—finished—you can’t—” His agonized face dropped against the floor. He was dead.
In the silence, Dora gave a low scream of horror as she shuddered against me. Then a violet flash hissed. For just an instant Freane, the surgeon, seemed to stand tottering, leprous with part of his body burned away. Then he fell.
A second or two. I had no time to move. I saw, in the doorway of the cage, that Groat was standing with a luminous cylinder in his hand. The skin of his face was wrinkled into a snarl that bared his white teeth.
“Stand still—” he rasped.
Around us, from his cylinder, the hissing violet light sprang circular, so that we stood barred. Then Groat snapped off his weapon. The light vanished. Some of the room drapes were burning.
“If you try to trick me—both of you will die,” Groat said softly. “You Alan—lead her here—” Then he laughed with a wild sudden triumph. “I forgot. She can see now. A woman complete. Come, you two—”
He stood beside the doorway, watching with alert weapon. I saw that from head to foot he was trembling; his voice was a low, purring growl; his eyes, luminous with triumph, seemed to dart fire at us.
“We are going,” he said. “Get inside.”
A madman! For just an instant I hesitated. Then I drew Dora, over the threshold. Behind us Groat came in. The door clicked. And like a pouncing animal Groat leaped for the controls. The cage flooded with luminosity, surged with electrical hum.
The shock of starting was far greater than before. Then as our senses steadied, I found that Dora had dropped into a chair and that I was standing beside her. From the instrument table came Groat’s voice: “We travel fast this time. Do not move—I can kill you with a movement of my finger—”
I glanced out through the bull’s-eye. Already the walls of the draped apartment were gone; the cage was outdoors with blurred grey terraces of the giant city looming everywhere into the sky around us! And Dora with her new-found sight, was gazing; so amazed, awed, confused that her senses seemed numbed.
Then I got my wits. I turned slowly to regard Groat. He sat facing us, sprawled tense at the instrument table, one of his hands on the controls, the other gripping his weapon.
“The trip-back won’t take long?” I said.
His grin bared his teeth. “Back? We are going forward. A real voyage now—” He glanced at his instruments. “4152. You see, we are making speed.”
I stared at him, numbed, helpless, wordless. And then I murmured, “Forward? But why, Groat?”
HE said, with a mounting wild, triumph, “I do not like my Time-world. Nor yours. We are going forward—very far. Where we can be alone! Dora—complete woman now. And I—Sah Groat—complete man. We will pick ourselves a time in this same Space—to be alone—to start a new race. Jason said it can’t be done—it’s against all laws of nature. But I’ll show him—I’ll outsmart Time!”
I sat numbed, shuddering. Was he wholly demented, or a rational fiend? He added. “A new race—from one mated pair. It can be made biologically possible. And you Alan—our servant. You will be useful with your health and strength in so many ways. Do not talk to me now. I am busy—I must select our home.”
He still was alert with his weapon. I did not dare move. Strange little Dora. In the sudden emergency now, her confusion was vanishing. As though with the passing of her blindness, here was a new Dora. And suddenly she whispered:
“Alan—if we could get that weapon—”
But how? His fingers never left it. My own confusion was passing. I was tense, alert, watchful—but I tried not to show it.
“Look outside!” Groat said. “The real changes are beginning.”
We swept past the year 10,000 . . .
Amazing grey, shifting panorama outside our little window. I could see now over a vast distance. The Titanic city was spread everywhere. The old familiar outlines of the enduring hills were changed now. Altered by the mechanisms of man. Beacon lights sometimes flashed for what might be a hundred years. Was this the summit of man’s achievement? For a breath, the melting structures were replaced by others of their kind. Mankind resting on the summit. Then I saw a section of the vast intricate structures melt down, crumbling from some catastrophe. And edifices, smaller, rose up.
Our forward Time-sweep was so swift now that I could see only the broad fundamental changes. Triumphant city neglected. Then at last it broke up and dropped into ruin and desolation.
50,000 A.D. Then 100,000 . . . In numerable smaller cities had appeared and vanished.—Always, smaller.
More transitory . . . Struggling little hamlets whose life span was so brief to my sight that they came and went like Bickering shadows . . . I saw the blurred changes of great storms. Gigantic cataclysms of nature . . . Pitiful remnants of mankind, still struggling here.
200,000 years .—500,000 . . . Ice had come and gone . . . Then the gray of a temperate, perhaps habitable climate . . . Human beings still here?
. . . Probably. But their futile, pitiful efforts were so briefly enduring that I could not see them . . .
Suddenly Dora and I became aware of Groat’s voice. “Why—I—I’ve gone too far. We do not want to live in so wretched a place as this. I will turn back.” He still held his weapon. His gaze still eagerly consumed Dora’s beauty. I felt her tense beside me. But he did not touch the controls. He seemed thinking only Of Dora’s beauty. And he added abruptly:
“Come here, Dora—you sit here by me. We must pick our future home.”
She stood up. “I’ll make a chance for you!” she whispered swiftly.
AMAZING little Dora. Smilingly, she sat beside him, with his burning, gaze upon her face and his hand like a claw gripping her shoulder. With a sudden startled amazement her glance went to the window. The end of the world! It was a great, soundless, blurred chaos. The Earth was gone! Numbed, I stared, as Dora was staring. Around us now there was only an illimitable grey void with the blurred streaks of stars. Soon perhaps, it would be empty of everything.
Eternity . . . We were trapped here. Trapped in eternal, soundless emptiness . . . Eternity, stretching on and on—into the infinitude of Forever . . .
Groat seemed engrossed only with Dora. Madman, plunging us on into the endless void . . . I saw presently that as he gazed with his smoldering eyes upon her beauty, his hand laid his weapon momentarily on the table. I tensed. And Dora’s hand, moving to touch him as though with a caress, dropped suddenly down and swept the weapon to the floor.
With a rasping scream Groat was on his feet, meeting my leap. The impact of my body knocked him backward. He fell, with his head and shoulder striking against a chair . . . Gruesome fall! He lay twitching, his mouth gaping, eyes wildly rolling, and a low, rasping, grinding pant issuing from his lips. Then the light went out of his eyes.
I stood gripping Dora, “Dead,” I murmured. “We’re safe now. I can work the controls. I saw how he did it.”
“Yes. Safe now—Alan—”
The body of Groat lay still. I stepped over him. I moved the control levers, slowly through the different intensities of Time-change. And then presently we were heading back.
“Alan—dear God—”
At Dora’s terrified clutch I swung from the instruments. Groat again was twitching. His body rolled across the room. His head dangled on his broken neck. His skull had split open.
What was this? A human brain, enmeshed with tiny wires! In the brief struggle I had torn away his shirt. Imbedded in the flesh of his chest was the circular disc of a fuse-box!
Damnable thing in human form! Parts of a man, body and brain, pieced together in the laboratory by the skill of science! A thing that should have been under the will-control of a Master. With a flash of realization I recalled the surgeon’s words. He had mentioned the Master! The scientist, Jason XI, who undoubtedly had invented the time cage. And created this thing which was a man in everything but the lack of soul. That indeed, was what I had sensed missing in its eyes! This damnable thing, running amok, stealing the cage, roaming aimlessly through the centuries—attracted by Dora.
In that moment as we stared, the deranged human body lurched waveringly upon its feet. The legs were buckling. It fell against the door. The pressure slid open the door. For a moment the staggering body toppled on the brink. Then it was gone, swallowed by the silent grey void of Eternity.
DOWN THE DIMENSIONS
Nelson S. Bond
At some “punctus” in himself was his corporeal self—starting on the journey into himself—as he now was——And thus it would be—endlessly——
BRADNER CHUCKLED. Even a scientist known to his fellows as “Old Cautious” was not without a sense of humor—and humor there was, as well as glory, in the journey he was about to undertake.
Only a few weeks before, Bradner had seen a pseudo-scientific feature in a neighborhood motion-picture house. Thinking now of the marvelous—well-nigh unbelievable—laboratory that figured so prominently in that film, he could not help but smile at the raw crudeness of his own tiny workshop.
No maze of cryptic coils and bars here. No ponderous machinery bedecked with bewildering keys and switches, no spluttering arcs or leaping flares, or glistening tables strewn with fuming beakers of chemicals and mysteriously bubbling test tubes. It was merely a quiet, simple room, with workbench, a desk and—a Chair.
Yet the Chair, Old Cautious knew, was a greater scientific achievement than all the harebrained marvels the movie genius had concocted from his maze of fantastic equipment. Here, at long last, was the seat of knowledge—the student’s bench to the unplumbed secrets of mankind. With its help, Bradner meant to embark on the greatest quest man could conceive—the search of the secret of being.
Bradner chuckled once again and settled himself in the Chair. Under the fingers of his left hand were a series of buttons controlling the complicated mechanism beneath the seat. The fingers of his right hand touched a vernier which could advance, retard, or even halt his rush into the unknown. In the pockets of his loose jacket were notebook and pencils, about his waist an unaccustomed gun belt. It was unlikely that he should find use for these things where he was going, but Bradner had earned the name of Old Cautious. It was best to leave nothing to chance.
On the desk across the room lay his diary; in it was a complete summary of his investigations, as well as a detailed description of the Chair. A card attached to the book instructed his landlady to forward it, should he not return within a reasonable length of time, to Professor Hallard Grayson of the university. Grayson, of all his colleagues, was most likely to understand the abstract reason that underlay the computations in that book. Grayson, too, was blessed with those priceless gifts: imagination and a sense of humor.
“WE LIVE,” Bradner had written in the diary, “in a world of three dimensions. Length, breadth and height are the terms commonly used to describe these three. Theorists have promulgated a fourth—a time—dimension, but of this we have no assured knowledge save that time is.
“It is a general premise that each dimension is an extension of former dimensions. This is, in a sense, true. A line is an extension of a point—a square the angular extension of a line—a cube the right-angled extension of a square. A tesseract, thus, is the logical fourth-dimensional extension of a cube.
“I hold, however, that succeeding dimensions not only extend, but bound, former dimensions. This fact, evident upon thought, is too generally overlooked.
“From a punctus, a point, lines might radiate in infinite variety. A point projected into its first, or linear dimension, however, becomes a line extending infinitely into only one direction. Thus the point has been, at the same time, extended and bounded!
“Similarly, a line may conceivably be extended into an infinite number of planes—but when actually extended into one, it becomes bounded by its dimensional extendor. It becomes a plane, or unidimensional, figure!
“A plane figure—a square, let us say—when extended is also bounded into a three-dimensional cube. Theoretically, this law obtains through all higher dimensions as well—a fourth-dimensional figure being both extended and bounded by its fourth-dimensional source, and so on.
“This explanation is, I know, superfluous. I include it merely to introduce my invention, and to explain its powers.
“It is my belief that somewhere within that which we know as the unidimensional state—that state wherein exists neither breadth nor height, only extension—lies the secret of the beginnings of life.
